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SEPTEMBER ISSUE ON SALE JULY 19TH

6 B1a$asK ^

K. S. White, Editor

VOL. XXIII No. 4 August, 1940

Contents

MURDER— FOR NO REASON . Roger Torrey .... 6

A complete novelette

Introducing Bryant — one-man crime-prevention bureau in a cow-country C.C.C.

TEN CARATS OF LEAD . Stewart Sterling ... 26

A complete novelette

It was a case for Homicide, according to all the rules, but Hansard knew it had
germinated under the three gold balls of his own special detail — the headquarters
hockshop squad.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS FAMOUS CRIME? . . I. B. Hazelton 50

A pictorial contest feature

Spot the flaws in this presentation of a notable murder case and win a cash prise
or a subscription to Black Mask. Announcement on Page 49.

CASEY AND THE BLOND WREN .... George Harmon Coxe 52

A short story

There were two kinds of people that got Flashgun’s goat — the camera-crazy and
the camera-shy. The blond little British wren was the latter — lens-leery though
lovely — but she had a reason.

TOO TOUGH . John Graham .... 67

A short story

The trouble with some guys is they don’t know the difference between tough and
too tough — too smart and just smart enough.

THE FRAME THAT DIDN’T FIT ... . Eaton K. Goldthwaite .

A short story

Meet Duke Brian and Franny Steinmetz, a pair of ex- felons frdm P hilly, and
the amazing Mr. Green who always got airsick before he took a plane trip.

BEHIND THE BLACK MASK .

A page of informal talk about the magazine — and things in general.

RATS BREED RATS . G. T. Fleming-Roberts

A short story

In which a tough cop and a sentimental newshound gamble against death with the
soul of a killers kid for table-stakes.

10,001 MOTIVES FOR MURDER . Wyatt Blassingame . .

A complete "Bishop" novelette

Everyone in South City knew about the first ten thousand reasons why Ralph
McDonald might have been bumped off. It was the ten-thousand-and-first that
packed the surprise.

JIM GREGG . Charles E. Jestings . .

LIFTING THESEPTEMBER BLACK MASK .

A partial preview of our plans for the next issue of this magazine.

104

128

Cover painted for Black Mask by Bafael DeSoto

Black-and-white illustrations by Peter Kuhlhoff

Every story in Black Mask is new and, to the best of our knowledge,
has never before been printed in any publication.

Issued Monthly by FICTIONEERS, Inc., 2242 Grove St., Chicago, Ill.

Editorial and executive offices at 210 E. 43rd St., New York, N. Y.

YEARLY SUBSCRIPTION $1:50-Foreign postage $1.00 additional SINGLE COPIES 15 CENTS

Entered as second class matter March 18, 19S8, at the Post Office at Chicago, III.,
under act of March 8, 1879. Printed in V. S. A.

Title registered as Trade Mark in U. S. Patent Office.

The publishers cannot accept responsibility for return of unsolicited manuscripts, although care will be exercised
in handling them. Such should be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope for their return if found
unusable. All rights reserved under Pan American copyright convention. - - - - Printed in U.S.A.

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LIFTING THE SEPTEMBER

BLACK MASK

ILL LENNOX, trou¬
ble shooter for General
Consolidated Studios,
returns in the next is¬
sue to take Pictures
for Murder, in W. T.
BALLARD’S newest
smashing complete novelette. Fish Har¬
bor, home port of Southern California’s
fishing fleet is the setting for this grip¬
ping yarn and the super-stench of tons
of tuna and sardines blend with the
blood-smell of murder to permeate the
shadows Lennox has to penetrate before
Wharf Street can be cleared and the
cameras begin to grind out another of
Sol Spurck’s “epics of the silver-screen.”

Remember O’Hanna, house-dick at
San Alpa, in DALE CLARK’S Rhymes
With Crimes back in the July issue?
He’s back again next month to crack
down on the neatest murder set-up we’ve
run across in a long time. The irrepres¬
sible author wanted to call the yarn Con ¬

fucius Say It’s Murder but we cracked
down on that like a Nazi blitzkrieg hav¬
ing taken a solemn vow to do nothing
to perpetuate and everything to discour¬
age the march of the C.S.I. gags. The
title is now Killer in the Wind and we’re
betting you’re going to like it too.

Then there’s another Broadway Squad
story by JOHN LAWRENCE, Death
in the Pluperfect, shorts by WILLIAM
BRANDON, CLEVE F. ADAMS and
JIM KJELGAARD — we’re going to
learn the correct pronunciation of that
guy’s name somehow, yet — and Dog Eat
Dog, one of the greatest detective yarns
of the year, by ROBERT REEVES. It
introduces Cellini Smith, who in our
candid opinion is the most original de¬
tective-fiction character S.S. (Since
Spade) — for anyone who happens to re¬
member a little piece called The Maltese
Falcon that once ran in these pages.

This grand issue of BLACK MASK
will be on sale JULY 19th.

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FOR NO REASON

CHAPTER ONE

Trouble ia Spelled with Three Cs

UST as I swam out
even with the tip of
the point something
spatted the water by
my head, then I heard
,;ke the crack-
The
d

by ROGER
TORREY

clothes and said : “Hey ! The looie says
you used to play football.”

“Three years for State,” I said. “And
then three years pro. We’ll have a foot¬
ball team, too.”

“Why’d you quit? There’s dough in
it, ain’t there?”

said. “Sure. I got a bad leg two
s ago, though, and it goes back on
when I twist suddenly.”

Huh! That why you took this job?”
I said it was. He asked me if it paid
•iuch money and I said nobody ever got
out of being a director of physical
tion at a C.C.C. camp, but that it
' turn out to be a lot of fun. Freddy
and said his idea of fun wasn’t
tuck up in the middle of the woods
fty miles from a picture show.

“Director of Physical Education” — that was what the C.C.C. authorities
had hired Bryant to be for the summer session of that cow-country
camp. But “One-Man Crime Prevention Bureau” would have been a
more accurate title. That was what he had to turn himself into when
someone began potting at him with a high-powered rifle and slaughter¬
ing wholesale the boys under his charge.

I figured he meant poolroom instead
of picture show but let it pass. I was
lacing my boots when he said : “Wasn’t
that guy shooting at you ?”

“What guy ?” I asked.

He grinned at me and said: “Now
look! I come from Chicago. I never
seen nobody get shot but I heard guns
before. And I seen that slug hit right
by your puss. Who’s gunning for you,
Mr. Bryant?”

I said that I hadn’t the least idea and
that we should be getting back to camp,
that I had a lot of things to do before
they sounded the supper call. I didn’t
tell Fred Ar della, but one of the things
t wanted to do was find why somebody
should start shooting a high-powered
rifle at me my second day in camp.

Roger Torrey

It just didn’t seem the way to start
out a happy summer that I’d figured
would be a sort of vacation.

APTAIN RAW¬
LINS was in his of¬
fice. He tipped his
head so he could look
at me over the top of
the rimless glasses
he wore, and I said :
“Somebody shot at me, Captain Rawlins.
I went swimming — and somebody potted
at me while I was in the water.”

He took off the glasses and started
polishing them. “You sure of that, Mr.
Bryant?”

I said I was certain — that there could
be no mistake. He said: “Possibly one
of the boys has smuggled a twenty-two
rifle into camp. We’ll have to in¬
vestigate.”

With that, he looked at me to see how
I was taking it.

“It was no twenty-two,” I said. “It
was a big gun. I’ve shot enough of them
to know that.”

“Almost hit you ?”

“Pretty close.”

He had almost white hair but his close-
cropped mustache was gray. He started
to gnaw at it and said, “This is awk¬
ward 1” as though he was thinking aloud.

I stood there, waiting, and he went
on with, “The camp has been threat¬
ened, Mr. Bryant. Frankly, that’s why
I approved your application, rather than
asking for someone with more experi¬
ence. I understand you originally came
from this country.”

I said: “My dad’s old place is about
twenty miles west of here. Dad sold it,
years ago, but I grew up there.”

“Then you’d know just about every¬
body in the country?”

“All the old-timers.”

He put the glasses back on and said :
“I was hoping there was nothing to the
threat. Yet, I felt I shouldn’t take an
unnecessary risk if it could be avoided.
I was told this was not a very healthy
place for a camp. In a very nice way,

you understand. Of course we both
know I have nothing to do or say about
where the camp is located. I am sent
here on orders only. But the people
around here apparently do not realize
that.”

“It’s an isolated spot, Captain Raw¬
lins. If it’s like it used to be, a lot of
these old-timers don’t even leave their
ranches except for supplies. Not over
twice a year sometimes. They’re behind
the times.”

“Ah yes,” he said, chewing at his mus¬
tache. “I understand that, but I don’t
understand the people. I can’t take a risk
with these boys, you know, Mr. Bryant. ”

Now we had two hundred and forty
boys in camp, mostly from Chicago, or
from Gary, right near there. A good
part of them were lads with foreign-bom
parents — more than half, probably. Some
of them were homesick and a lot more
of them were half sore about being taken
clear across the continent and put under
the kind of supervision they were get¬
ting. There was enough opportunity
for trouble right in the camp without
more being added to it from outside
sources.

I said all this, and Rawlins sighed
and said: "I’m a regular army man,
Mr. Bryant. I think these camps are a
good thing — in fact, I think they are a
fine thing — but I find dealing with the
boys isn’t like dealing with an enlisted
group. Discipline and order are harder
to maintain. I want no other trouble.”

When I asked him who’d made the
threats he said: “The man who made
the threat is named Withers. He and
some friends of his rode up for what
they were pleased to term a friendly
visit. Naturally I took them around and
tried to explain the work we are doing.
I explained the boys were building
roads, clearing fire-trails, making drain¬
age ditches, similar things. I explained
to them our plan of making this a more
or less permanent station and how we
planned to make this a model camp.
Why we were attempting a modified
landscaping in the territory surrounding

Murder — For No Reason

the actual camp. They listened to me
very intently and then told me this was
no place for the camp to be.

“I demanded to know what they
meant by that statement and they said,
vaguely, that the people around here
didn’t approve of such foolishness. That
the ranchers who specialized in raising
cattle and sheep looked upon this section
of country as summer range and would
resent our boys being here. I imagine
they are afraid of the boys scaring the
stock, or some such foolishness as that.
They mentioned the ever present danger
of forest fire, claiming our boys would
add to this. I told them that invariably
someone was in charge of the boys when
they were working outside of the camp
proper, and that the boys would act as
fire-fighters in case of need — that this
was part of their duty. That, as a matter
of fact, the danger of fire causing seri¬
ous damage was lessened by their pres¬
ence.”

“I don’t know, or remember, anyone
named Withers,” I said. “Did he say
where he lived?”

“Well, no. I didn’t ask — I took it for
granted he lived fairly near. I didn’t
take the man seriously then. But three
days later, when a shot was fired at me,
I decided the man was actually liable to
be a menace.”

“They shot at you, too?”

“Yes. And at Lieutenant Ward. Nei¬
ther bullet came close to either of us —
we took them as a warning. That’s why
I approved of your application.”

“Did you tell the state police?”

He . took off the glasses again and
looked at me severely. He said: “Mr.
Bryant ! I look on this as an army post.
Technically, I suppose we are under the
jurisdiction of the state police, but I
hope I will not live to see the day when
I am forced to call in police to protect
men I am commanding. I rather think,
that with your knowledge of the country
and the people, we can work this out
between us.”

I said: “Well, I’ll take time off and do
a little scouting around. I’ll meet some

old friends, surely, and I’ll ask a few
questions. And it might have been one
of the boys with a smuggled rifle, as you
suggested. Captain Rawlins. I’ll see
what I can find.”

“Please do, Mr. Bryant, immediately,”
he said.

I looked back at him, just as I was
going out the door, and he wasn’t ex¬
pecting it. He didn’t look cold and brisk
then. Just worried. He hadn’t sounded
as though he’d expected me to find
any smuggled guns, either — and that
meant quite a lot. This Rawlins had been
taken from the regular army and put in
charge of a bunch of city kids — and he
didn’t like one bit of it. He didn’t know
anything about his new job — but he was
no fool.

There was trouble in the air and he’d
caught the feeling.

RED ARDELLA was
waiting for me outside
the office building. He
sa'd : “Hey, Mr. Bryant !
I just seen somebody
f ]ly sneaki"S around the

“Probably somebody trying to snag
a little something extra from the cook,”
I said. “This air and exercise will pick
up you fellows’ city appetites in a
hurry.”

“It wasn’t any of the guys, Mr. Bry¬
ant. It was somebody in hick clothes.
I seen him plain.”

I said, “It’s saw, Fred, not seen,”
headed for the cookhouse, and walked
fairly into the mess — with Fred behind
me, which wasn’t so good.

The cook was on the floor, half under
a table. He was on his side and there
was blood on his forehead and on the
floor by it. The second cook and the four
boys who were on cookhouse duty were
standing by the big range, with their
hands raised. The cook and three of the
boys looked scared, but the other boy
was grinning as if he enjoyed the show.
There was a husky, stockily built man
standing in front of them and holding a

Roger Torrey

gun on them, and when I went in the
door he swung the gun my way and said :
“Get over in line.”

I got over in line. I didn’t even own
a gun, much less have one with me. Fred
tried to duck back out of sight, but the
man saw him and Fred joined us.

The boy that wasn’t scared looked at
me and kept his grin and said: “Big-
city stuff, hey, mister?”

I didn’t know his name but I grinned
back at him and said it was. The cook
started to stir around, where he was
under the table, and the man with the
gun turned that way a little — and I went
for his knees with all the speed I could
put in it.

My game knee went back on me,
which was a usual thing, and I fell five
feet short and flat on my face. Then the
lights went out for me.

CAME back with
Captain Rawlins squat¬
ting on the floor by me
L and giving me part of
E'a haircut. He was just
•^taking off a bit on one
side, so he could tape
a bandage down over the cut on my
head, but I didn’t know that and rolled
away from him and his scissors.

He said, in his clipped way: “Please
lie quiet, Mr. Bryant ! That thug struck
you on the head with a gun barrel. For¬
tunately, he didn’t fracture your skull.”

The mqment I moved I wished I
hadn’t. It felt as though the top of my
head was going to lift off.

I said: “Where’d he go? My leg
went bad or I’d have got him.”

Rawlins said reprovingly: “Mr. Bry¬
ant! Don’t ever do such a foolish thing
again. The man would undoubtedly
have shot you had you succeeded in
reaching him. Such heroics are suici¬
dal. Nothing less.”

He sounded as though he didn’t like
my going for the hold-up man, but his
eyes didn’t look the way his voice sound¬
ed. They were friendly.

I looked around and saw the cook sit¬

ting on the floor but leaning back against
the cookhouse wall, and he said: “I got
the same thing you got, Mr. Bryant. I
thought it was a joke, at first.”

All the boys were standing around,
and the one that hadn’t been scared
was still wearing his grin. He said:
“Aw, it was nothing! The guy just
lowered the boom, is all. He wasn’t
doing any shooting — I could see he
didn’t want no part of any shooting,
right when he come in.”

“What’s that?” said Rawlins, look¬
ing over that way.

“Hagh! He come in and I seen right
off he wasn’t wanting to shoot nobody.
He kept close, so he could club with the
gun in case one of us made a break. If
he’d wanted to shoot, he’d have stayed
back a ways. 'At’s easy to figure out,
mister. ’*

“Call me Captain Rawlins,” said
Rawlins, automatically. And then to
me, “Would you know the man again,
Mr. Bryant?”

“Yes, sir. A man about thirty. He
was dressed in rough clothes, but he’s
not from this country. He’s not a na¬
tive, I’m sure.”

“Why?”

I’d been trying to think just what
had struck me wrong about the hold-up
man and I finally got what had puzzled
me. I said: “His clothes were all right,
sir, but his face wasn’t tanned the way
it should have been. He was sun-burned
instead of tanned. And he was carrying
an automatic — pretty near all the peo¬
ple around here favor a revolver.
Though most of them don’t own one. A
rifle and a shotgun can be used in this
country — a revolver is almost useless.”

The boy who’d spoken before said:
“A hell of a lot of guys have been
bumped off with ’em, mister.”

Rawlins said: "I’ll have no profan¬
ity in my presence, young man. What’s
your name?”

The boy said: “Richard Deiss.”

“Add the word ‘sir’ to that, if you
please.”

“Well . sir.”

Murder — For No Reason

Rawlins said to me: “Suppose you
go to your quarters, sir, and rest until
you feel more fit. I’d like to speak with
you then, if I may. Are you feeling
better, cook?”

The cook said he was feeling much
better, and Rawlins walked out.

The boy named Deiss said: “The

dirty - ! Telling me to call him

‘sir’.”

Then Fred Ardella said, “You’re in
the army now.” and all the others
laughed.

Fred walked back with me to my cab¬
in because I was still shaky. He said,
just as we got there: “This guy Deiss
is all right. His brother’s in the can
for manslaughter and his old lady’s dead.
His old man won’t work and Blacky —
we call him Blacky — sort of run around
by himself, if you know what I mean.”

I said, “Oh, he’ll get used to it here
and like it,” and hoped I was speaking
the truth.

CHAPTER TWO

Mass Murder

\ HIS time Lieutenant
Ward was with the
captain when I went
in. Ward, who was
young and almost fat,
grinned at me and
said : “Ah-ha ! The
hero himself. All I’ve been hearing from
the kids is how you tackled the hold-up
man with your bare hands. They think
you’re hot stuff, Bryant.”

I said : “It’s probably a good thing for
me I didn’t make my tackle. The guy
would probably have done me in right
there.”

Rawlins frowned and said: "There’s
something odd about this. The man
asked for nothing, I understand. He
just stood the boys up against the wall
and kept them there. It’s a mystery.
After he knocked you out, Mr. Bryant,
he ran out of the cookhouse and that was
the last seen of him. He wasn’t alone.

I understand some of the boys scouted
around and found where three horses
had been tied to trees, on the far side
of the camp but out of sight. Do you
understand it?”

I said: “Indeed I don't. I’m afraid
one of the boys might meet the man and
do something foolish. There’s a possi¬
bility of the man leaving the country
now, of course.”

Ward said : “Let some of these tough
Chicago babies of mine get their hands
on him and he’ll wish he’d left. I’ve
got a dozen little hoodlums in that crowd
that will end up on the gallows.”

“Now, Lieutenant,” said Rawlins.
“You shouldn’t speak of the boys like
that, even in sport. A lot of these boys
have never been out like this before.”

“None of them have.”

I said: “I’ve got one of them follow¬
ing me around like he was a pet poodle.
The Ardella boy. I can’t turn around
without bumping into him.”

Ward said: “A good kid.”

Captain Rawlins said: “If you feel
up to it, Mr. Bryant, I’d like to have
you drop your regular work and look
into this for us. This has me worried.
I fear the boys aren’t safe with things
as they are.”

“It might be better if I worked at it
slow and easy,” I said. “Apparently
we’re watched here. If I go about things
as though nothing out of the way has
happened, I think I may have better
luck.”

He thought that over and admitted I
might be right and told me to work it
out any way I wanted. Ward and I left
together — our cabins were side by side,
with Lieutenant Comiskey’s cabin just
on the other side of his — and when we
got to his door he stopped and said:
“Got a gun, Bryant?"

I said I hadn’t.

He told me to wait a second and went
in the cabin, then came back with a Colt
.45 automatic, that looked as big as a
house. He handed me this and a box of
shells and said : “I’d carry it for a while.
That bird that smacked you might come

Roger Torrey

back. You know enough not to start
anything if he’s got the drop on you,
don’t you?”

“You forget I was brought up in this
country,” I said. “They still settle
things with guns around here — that is,
the old-timers do. I won’t take any
chances.”

“I wouldn’t,” he said, scratching one
of his heavy jowls. “I’ve had a funny
hunch about this place ever since we
brought the boys in here. There’s some¬
thing wrong here.”

I asked : “Where’s Comiskey to¬
night?”

“He went into town after the mail
and some supplies with one of the trucks
and half a dozen of the boys. He’ll be
back any time, now."

It was just then that we heard the
boys shouting from down the road and
both Ward and I turned and ran for the
sound. From their voices they sounded
as though they needed help.

ARD’S flash picked
them out when we
j were still a hundred
f yards away. There
1 were three of them.
I Two of them were
_ * running and the oth¬
er was just picking himself up after a
fall. Just as we saw this a shot banged
out in the wood, right above them, and
the boy who’d just got to his feet spun
and went down again.

I said to Ward: “Get that light off
them, Lieutenant ! Fast ! That kid took
a slug.”

We got to the two boys who were
still on their feet and I said : “Keep go¬
ing, guys. Don’t stop until you get to
camp. ”

The one in front stopped and panted :
“The truck! The truck! It’s off the
road a couple of miles down. They’re
hurt — all of them.”

“What about Lieutenant Comiskey?”
snapped Ward.

“He — he’s dead,” the boy managed
to say.

I said: “When you get to camp find

Captain Rawlins. Tell him about this.
Tell him to get a truck and get it down
there and get them back to camp. Ward,
take care of the kid down here, will
you?”

I started up through the brush and
heard him say : "Hey wait, Bryant ! Not
in the dark!”

I didn’t like the idea myself because
I didn’t know just what I might run
into, but I figured I’d have as good a
chance that way as the other fellow
would.

It was easy enough to see just what
was happening— the truck had been run
off the road — and somebody on a horse
had followed the three kids up the road,
keeping above them, and had cut loose
with his gun at the boy our light had
spotted for him. Ward and the two boys
and I had been making a lot of noise
talking and the gunman might have rid¬
den away. I didn’t know, but I thought
I could go through that underbrush as
quietly as a horse could — and I might
get lucky.

I did just that. I wasn’t over a hun¬
dred feet away from the road when I
heard a snorting sound just ahead and
to the right. I latched the safety off the
automatic and went that way, trying to
keep from making a sound — and then
the horse snorted again. After that I
heard somebody mutter angrily : “Hold
still!”

It didn’t sound as though it came
from more than twenty feet ahead, but
I was wrong on that. All of a sudden
the brush started to crack and I heard
a horse going away from there in a
hurry.

I ran just as fast as I could in the
direction of the sound. The trees thinned
out a little and I got a hazy glimpse of
a man on a horse and I emptied my gun
that way. It was too dark to see any¬
thing but the line of the barrel and I
didn’t think there was any chance of hit¬
ting anything but it seemed to be worth
a try.

I heard Ward shout, from the road,
and I called back: “I’ll be right there.
He ran away.”

Murder — For No Reason

WARD had the boy’s
belt off and was using
it for a tourniquet.
The boy had taken the
slug through the
fleshy part of his leg
and it hadn’t touched
the bone but had cut the big artery there.
The kid was perfectly conscious and was
leaning up on his elbows and watching
Ward work.

I said: “He got away. I just got a
look at a man on a horse.”

“You hit him?” asked the boy.

I said I didn’t think so but that I cer¬
tainly hoped I had. And then the boy told
us just how much he hoped so too — and
he used more language than I ever heard
in all my life, even after three years on a
professional football team.

He said, when he got that out of his
system: “They worked it dirty on us.
Jonsey was driving and the looie and
a guy named Morri were on the front
seat with him. Me and Harper and Cort
were in the back. We was looking over
Jonesy’s shoulder — you know — just
standing up and hanging onto the seat
back and looking at the road. We was
hungry, see, and wanted to get back be¬
fore the chef closed up the cookhouse.
The looie said he’d see we all fed. So
we see where a piece of the road has
come down, on the upper side, and
Jonesy pulls as far over to the lower side
as he can and starts to go by in low.
There was room. Then the bank just
caves and down we go. I’ll bet that truck
tipped over sideways twenty times or
more before we hit bottom.”

I looked at Ward and he looked at me.
The boy knew what we were thinking,
because he added : “Yeah ! That’s where
it was. Right at that place where the
road runs up and is shelved into the side
of the hill. Where it’s steep going down
to the creek.”

That made it deliberate murder and
nothing else. And mass murder. The
road was a hundred feet or more above
the creek at the place the boy was
speaking of, and it was almost straight
down. If the road had been undermined

there the truck was sure to go down —
and with it the men who were riding it.
And with a heavy truck, going over and
over like that, it was more than likely
that everybody in the truck would be
killed.

The boy got the idea all right, because
he said: “Me and Harper and Cort got
jarred loose on the first roll and sort of
thrown to the back. Then we got pitched
out. We went down and looked and
Lieutenant Comiskey was dead. We
got Jonesy out and put him by the truck
but the steering wheel had shoved his
chest in bad. He couldn’t talk.”

Ward asked: “What about the other
boy ? Morri ?”

The boy looked sick and it wasn’t
alone from the bullet through his leg.
He said: “He — the truck’s on him yet.
We tried to pry it off, but it just sort
of kept settling more. So we went to get
help.”

Then we heard another truck come
pounding down the road and it pulled
up with the lights on us. Captain Raw¬
lins came piling out and ran to us and
said : “How bad is he hit ?”

“Through the leg,” Ward said.

Rawlins was right in action. He
snapped: “All right! Two of you men
get that stretcher out of the back of
the truck. Carry him to the cook shack —
the cook knows some first aid.”

“Maybe he should be taken to town,
sir,” Ward suggested.

The captain said: “Nonsense! The
doctor will come here. Move now, you
men!”

Two of the lads from the truck
brought a stretcher and we loaded the
boy on it. About that time the rest of
the boys started streaming down the
road to us, so I knew the two that had
gone on ahead and told the captain, had
also .told their friends.

The captain took the first five he saw
and got them in the back of the truck and
said : “This will be enough. Lieutenant
Ward, you and Mr. Bryant will come
with me.”

He went down that rough mountain
road at forty miles an hour.

Roger Torrey

CHAPTER THREE
With a A5

«E HADN’T needed
to hurry but we didn’t
know that until we’d
climbed down to the
wreck. It wasn’t hard
to find — a section of
the road was entirely
missing, and the truck was at least a
hundred feet below. Comiskey had been
killed instantly, his head crushed in like
an eggshell. The cab seat on the truck
had buckled and had caught him like a
vise, when some roll of the truck had
pitched him up against the roof. The
boy that had been driving the car was
still alive but unconscious. We got
there just in time to watch him die. The
one that had been pinned under the car
was also dead — and I pitied him the
most. He’d known what was coming and
he’d just had to stay there and wait for
death.

Rawlins spread blankets he’d brought
over the bodies and said: “We’ll leave
them here tonight. I’ll stay and watch,
gentlemen. It will be better to move
them in the morning.”

I said: “This is murder, Captain
Rawlins. I’m almost certain we should
leave them as they are until the county
authorities are notified and examine the
scene.”

Rawlins said, in a voice that didn’t
sound like his own: “They’d better get
here early then. I’ll not leave these boys
out here like this. It isn’t decent.” Then
he added: “Call the coroner, Lieutenant
Ward, immediately upon your return to
camp. Tell him I’d appreciate it if he’d
start for here at once. You had also bet¬
ter notify the sheriff as well as the state
police. This is out of our hands.”

The boys that had ridden down with
us, in case we needed help in lifting the
truck, were standing by. Two of them
were crying and trying to act as though
they weren’t.

One of the others said: “If we catch

the guy that did this we’ll hang him.”

I looked a little closer when I heard
him speak and saw it was the same boy
that had been at the hold-up in the cook¬
house — Richard Deiss — the one who
hadn’t been frightened.

Rawlins also recognized him because
he said : “That will do, Deiss. The law
will handle this matter.”

Deiss muttered something and I said :
“I’ll stay with you, Captain.”

“You are in no condition to stay, Mr.
Bryant,” he said. “Please go back with
Lieutenant Ward.”

He was only about five feet away from
me and I thought the boys couldn’t hear
me from where I stood. I said, very
softly: “Captain! Give me a break! I’ve
got a notion the man that did this will
come back to see how it worked out. I
missed him once tonight — maybe I won’t
again. ”

“Are you armed?”

“Yes, sir.”

He raised his voice and said: “Lieu¬
tenant, Mr. Bryant wishes to stay with
me here by the wreck. Please return to
camp and notify the authorities, as I
have requested.”

Ward gave me a hard look and started
the boys up the bank toward the truck.
I knew he’d had the same thought I’d
had and was wishing I hadn’t spoken
about it first.

We could hear the truck back and
fill as they turned it toward the camp,
and then the captain said: “Mr. Bryant,
I am at a loss about this. It seems so
senseless. There’s no reason why a thing
like this should happen. Deliberate mur¬
der, for no reason. I can’t believe these
lives were taken just because some of
the natives objected to our presence here.
That isn’t reasonable.”

I agreed with him.

He said, as though thinking aloud:
“There was no trouble last year, or I’d
have been told about it. You know this
camp was established last year, Mr.
Bryant. ”

I’d taken that for granted because of
the obviously weathered condition of

Murder — For No Reason

some of the buildings. I said: “Well,
of course I’ve only been here a couple of
days. I haven’t had much of a chance to-
find out about things like that.”

“The camp was built early last year
and about one hundred and fifty men
were stationed here. It was decided to
abandon this site, however, and the camp
was vacated last fall, with the exception
of the usual caretaker left under those
conditions. A change of plans occurred
during the winter and the camp was
again to be put in use, though what
caused the change I don’t know, natur¬
ally. All I know is that I was given this
assignment and brought the men here.”

“How long ago?”

“Possibly a month — time goes rapidly
on a job of this kind. The camp had to
be put in shape for more men — more
cabins had to be constructed and the
older ones repaired. And I admit it’s
the first time I was ever detailed on such
duty, and so I was working under a
handicap. I feel responsible for what’s
happened. I thought it just some mal¬
content, objecting to our presence here
because of some silly personal reason. I
can’t understand this, Mr. Byrant.
Murder — for no reason.”

“There’s a reason,” I said. “There
has to be a reason for murder.”

I got a flashlight from the wrecked
truck and dug out the box of shells
Ward had given me at the same time
he’d handed me the pistol. I filled the
clip and jacked a shell into the chamber,
and said : “I’m going up and take a look
at what was done to the road. And find
a hide-out that I can sneak back to in the
dark between here and the road. It
would be a good plan if you built a little
fire, over at the side, and maybe put
some blankets in the shadow so it would
look as though you were asleep. Have
you got a gun, sir?”

He said: “I didn’t take time to pick
it up. I thought it just an accident at the
time, though the boy that brought the
message from you assured me his friend
had been shot. It was unbelievable — or
so I thought then. I know better now.”

Making quite a lot of

noise and flashing
the light back and
forth, I started up
toward the road. I’ll

the killer hadn’t had
time to get back to the scene of the
wreck. With nothing but a flashlight
and an unfamiliar gun between me and
a man, or men, who’d already killed
three people that same evening, I had a
funny creepy feeling running up and
down my back that I couldn’t manage to
control.

I made it up to where the road was
cut out, dreading every step. The road
had been built just by cutting into the
side of the hill, and all the wrecker had
done was cut under the lower side of it.
I don’t think he’d taken out more than
three dozen shovelfuls of dirt in all. But
he’d taken ’em out in such a way that
the right front wheel of the truck just
sank and down the gully it went.

Above the road he’d just started a
little landslide — enough to block the
inner edge of the road. Altogether, it
hadn’t taken much work to wreck that
truck and kill three men for no reason
that either the captain or I could figure
out. I spotted a little clump of firs, just
above the wrecked truck and maybe fifty
feet from it, and I made plenty noise
going back to the fire Captain Rawlins
had built.

He came out of the darkness back of
it and said, very softly: “I made what
looked like two people sleeping and put
them in the shadows. If a man got close
he’d know they’re dummies — but from
a few feet away he couldn’t tell.”

I said, “Swell” and we pretended to
go over that way, just in case anyone
was watching.

And then I ducked back and went up
to my fir thicket, doing it as quietly as
I could — and expecting to see a gun
flash out fire at me every step I took.
I really had the jitters. Woods at night
like that have a funny kind of quiet —
the trees creak and groan and there’s a

Roger Torrey

steady rustling, whishing sound from
the wind through the pine needles — and
though I’d been brought up in that coun¬
try and knew what to expect, even fa¬
miliar noises can sound ominously differ¬
ent when you’re keeping watch over
three dead men. Men killed for no ap¬
parent reason.

I found my thicket and burrowed into
it until I was almost out of sight. It
wasn’t cold at all — the breeze didn’t get
that close to the ground. I laid there,
trying to listen to everything and pick
out a man’s footsteps through the natural

sounds - and I’ll be darned if I didn’t

fall asleep.

WO MEN woke me
and they weren’t over
fifteen feet from me. I
could see one of them
outlined against a
slightly lighter patch
of brush, but the other
one was in shadow. They were talking
in whispers but I could hear one say:
“My foot’s damn near killing me.”

The other one said : “A blister ! And
you’re crying about it like it was a brok¬
en leg. Shut up and listen 1 ”

They kept quiet a moment and I
shoved the safety down on the automatic.

In a minute the one that had been
complaining about his foot said: “I still
think we should have stopped at the
camp. We could have asked questions.
I don’t like this.”

“It was your idea in coming back here
to see what happened,” the other one
said. “It’s like I said. Somebody’s
keeping watch down there. There’s still
a few coals where he built a fire and I
can see where he’s rolled up in a blanket
on the other side of it. Look there.”

He pointed and again they kept silent.
Then the first one said : “ Might as well
go first-class. I’ll knock him out and
we’ll look the truck over. I know I hit
that kid, up in the road, but I want to
see what happened down here.”

I kept flat on my stomach, just like I
was. But I stuck the automatic out and

said, “Don’t move!” from that position.

They moved fast and in two different
directions. I shot once at the man who’d
said he’d done the shooting up in the
road — and I knew I’d missed as soon as
I pulled the trigger. One of the men
shouted — I couldn’t tell which because
my ears were ringing from the noise of
the gun — and then one of them shot back
at me. I held the gun on the flash of his,
as near as I could, and tried again. I
couldn’t see him at all, but I knew it was
the one who hadn’t done the shooting —
the one who wasn’t complaining about
his foot.

From farther down the hill, three more
shots came my way — just as fast as they
could be fired — and I heard Rawlins
shout: “Hold ’em, Bryant!”

With that, the man who’d done the
last shooting started running. I could
hear him going through the brush, crash¬
ing through it with as much noise as a
horse would make. I didn’t hear any¬
thing of the other man, so I called to
Rawlins: “One of them’s still here.
Keep back.”

He said, “Keep back hell!” and came
panting up to where I was. He was
holding a big club, and his hair was all
tousled from where he’d been lying
down. He didn’t have his glasses on and
his uniform coat was unbuttoned with
the collar loosened and he didn’t look at
all like the strict careful officer he usu¬
ally did. He said: “You hit anybody?”

I whispered, “Here, take the gun!”
and passed it over. “You stay here —
you’re a better shot than I am. I’ll get
a bit away and turn the flash on. He’ll
shoot at it and then you can nail him.”

“He may hit you. There’s been
enough murder here tonight.”

“I’ll get behind a tree,” I said.

I did — twenty feet away — and stuck
the flash out and turned it on and waited
for the shooting to begin but nothing
happened. I kept moving the flash back
and forth, but not seeing where it was
pointing, and all of a sudden Rawlins
said, in a funny voice: “It’s all right.
Come on, Bryant.”

Murder — For No Reason

I stepped out from behind the tree and
he said: “Right ahead of you. You
caught him with the light once. Our
side’s getting in, now.”

And then I saw the man, lying face
down and all spread out. He wasn’t
moving and I held the light on him while
Rawlins went up, covering him with the
gun. He bent down and took a gun from
the ground by the man’s hand and then
I went up.

We turned him over and Rawlins
said: “That’s marvelous, Mr. Bryant,
marvelous! Between the eyes, shooting
in darkness. I congratulate you, sir.”

I didn’t say anything because I
couldn’t. When I’d shot at the flash of
the dead man’s gun I’d gotten lucky for
once. I’d hit him right between the eyes
and what that heavy .45 bullet did to
him was something not to see.

I said finally : “It wasn’t the right one.
It wasn’t the one that shot the boy up
in the road. He ran the other way, when
I told them to not move.”

Rawlins said grimly : “This is a start.
We can find who this man is, and from
that we can locate his friend.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Rawlins Gets His Gun

WE WERE still look¬
ing at the dead man
when the boys from
the camp got there.
There were about a
dozen of them —
Ward had sent that
many, both for safety and because he
knew that none of the boys would have
gone along that road at night alone after
what had happened. They stopped
above us, flashing lights all around, and
called: “Captain Rawlins! Mr. Bryant!”

We went up to the road. The spokes¬
man was a tow-headed kid, not over
eighteen if that, and he was so excited
he could hardly talk.

He said: “L-l-l-lieutenant W-ward
sent us. There’s more trouble at the

camp, sir, and Lieutenant Ward t-thinks
you should go back there. H-he sent us
after you.”

“What’s happened,” asked Rawlins.

Somebody was sneaking around again,
sir,” he said more calmly. “The cook
was working late, getting ready for
breakfast, and he heard ’em. He ran
out and held one of them and then Lieu¬
tenant Ward came. There was some
shooting and one of our guys got shot.
He shot three times at the lieutenant
though, sir, and the -lieutenant didn’t
know it was one of our guys when he
shot back. ”

“One of our boys! Is he hurt?”

“He’s dead. And the lieutenant said
to tell you the telephone line is down.
He said he’d have sent a truck out to¬
night but that it couldn’t get past this
bad place in the road.”

I said : “What about the man the cook
was holding ? The one he grabbed when
he ran outside, after hearing the noise?
What about him?”

“That’s the guy that got shot, Mr.
Bryant. He had a gun and he shot at
the lieutenant, after he’d pulled away
from the cook. His name was Joe Big-
gers, Mr. Bryant. He was in that bunch
that runs around with Blacky Deiss.”

“That would be Richard Deiss?” the
captain asked.

“Yes, sir. He’s from Gary, he and
the guys that hang around with him.”

Young Deiss had been puzzling me
for some time, but I didn’t think this
was any time to go into further conver¬
sation about him. I hadn’t liked the
boy, but put that feeling down to just
not caring for his flip manner and talk.

The captain said heavily, to me : “This
caps it. This puts the lid on it. Ill be
up before the board on this. I’ll face
charges. Poor Ward — I’ll bet he’s in
agony.”

“There’s an answer to it, sir. I’ve
got a hunch Ward will come out all
right.”

“Oh, they’ll call it an accident, no
doubt. Will that make Ward feel any
better? Will I feel any better — know-

Roger Torrey

ing one of the boys in my charge was
shot by one of my officers? Knowing
another officer lies dead here for God
knows what reason?”

I said: "I’m willing to bet the tele¬
phone line was cut — and that the road
will be wrecked, down at the pass where
we go through that rock fill. I’ll bet
that’s another place we’ll find the road
tampered with.”

Rawlins said, "Nothing would sur¬
prise me now,” and started down the
road toward camp.

I stayed where I was. I thought that,
after all, somebody responsible should
stay with our three dead and the other
dead man who’d been in the plot to kill
them.

Though I’d have kept no death watch
for him alone. If he’d been buried at
that time I’d have danced on his grave.

rpHE rest of the night passed quietly.

It got cold along toward morning
but I was wrapped in some extra blank¬
ets and didn’t mind. And Rawlins and
Lieutenant Ward came with a truck and
a dozen of the boys, just after breakfast
time. They both looked as though they
hadn’t slept a wink.

Rawlins said: “Mr. Bryant, please
take the truck and a driver and go back
to the camp. Send the truck back for
us at once. Lieutenant Ward and I’ll
straighten up things here. We can’t
leave these bodies here until the coroner
arrives, regardless of what the law is in
the matter. I will take full responsibil¬
ity for their removal.”

I said: “I could stay and help you.”

He said: "You will be in charge of
the camp in my absence. Lieutenant
Ward is now under technical arrest,
though the three of us understand this
is a formality. I’ve sent a crew of boys
out to try and find where the telephone
line is broken. They will report to you
if they return before I get back. Use
your own judgement if anything comes
up.”

I said, “Yes, sir!” and went up the
road to the truck.

The driver was a boy I’d not noticed
before, and he said: “You’re Bryant,
eh — the guy that tackled the hold-up
man in the cook shanty?”

I said he’d guessed right, but that
the less I heard about the hold-up in the
cookhouse, the better I’d like it.

He grinned and said: "Sure! You
only been here a couple of days but the
guys think you’re O.K. Because of
you going for that guy like that, I guess.
They think the captain’s a big heel. It’s
do this and do that and say ‘sir’ to him
and all that. Like in the army. They
like Ward though, and Comiskey was
a good guy.”

I said: “Captain Rawlins is an old
army man who’s never worked with raw
recruits like you fellows. That’s all.
You’ll find he’ll fight for you, if you’re
in the right, just as fast as he’ll raise
hell with you if you’re in the wrong.”

“Maybe so,” said the driver. He
didn’t sound as though he believed me.
“The guys say you killed a man down
there last night. That right?”

I thought about how I’d shot the man
who hadn’t done the shooting in the
road — how the one I’d really wanted
to kill had gotten away the night before.
Twice.

I said: “Yeah ! That’s right! The
wrong man !”

“That’s what the looie did,” he said.
"This guy Joe Biggers. Biggers had a
pistol in his hand though, and he’d shot
it three times at the looie. Or at least
the looie thought Biggers was shooting
at him, or he wouldn’t have shot back.
It’s a hell of a note. What’ll they do
to him?”

I said I didn’t know and we wheeled
into the camp.

GOT cleaned up and
bummed a late break¬
fast from the cook,
and then went over
to the office just in
case something came
up where the boys
would have to see whoever was in

Murder — For No Reason

charge. None of the working parties
had been sent out and the whole camp
was standing around in little groups,
talking. The flag was at half-mast,
and that made the whole affair a little
unreal to me. It didn’t seem possible
that a thing like murder could happen
like it had.

It was all crazy — none of it made
sense. People aren’t killed for no reason
at all — and I couldn’t think of any sen¬
sible reason.

And then Richard Deiss came in the
office and said: “Can I talk to you a
minute, mister?”

I said he could and he stood in front
of the desk, as though he was on parade.

I said: “Sit down and be comfort¬
able. I’m not an officer, Deiss. I don’t
think you understand — they’re bound
by rules and regulations. They can’t
act as they’d often like to — they have
to behave according to what’s in the
book. It finally gets to be a habit with
them.”

He growled, “They put on a show,
is all,” but he sat down. He was a big
kid, about twenty I thought, and he
had a suspicious way of tilting his head
and looking at you from the side.

I said: “What’s the matter? I’m
supposed to be looking after things until
the captain gets back, so you can talk to
me, if you want. Or if you’d rather wait
for the captain it’s all right with me.”

He said : “That heel ! It’s you I want¬
ed to see. Maybe you can make the guy
see sense. I told the guys there was
no use in talking to him.”

“Talking to him about what?”

“They going to move the camp now?”

“I wouldn’t know. I doubt it. I doubt
if any man in the world could move Cap¬
tain Rawlins away from here until the
government told him to go.”

Deiss nodded, as though he’d expected
to hear that. He said : “Well, I’m tell¬
ing you. You won’t have no camp. It’ll
just be you and the cook and the looie
that’s still alive. And the captain. May¬
be even the cook will go, too.”

“I don’t understand that, Deiss.”

He gave me a mean look and said:
“There’s a hell of a lot going on here
you don’t understand, mister. And us
guys don’t either. All we know is there’s
been three guys killed in a truck, and the
truck was made to go over that bank on
purpose. The road was fixed so the
truck couldn’t miss. A pal of mine gets
killed because the looie don’t know
which way to shoot. Another guy gets
shot in the ham, coming back from the
truck. There’s a stick-up in the kitchen
and you and the cook get bopped on the
head. The telephone line is cut and it
can’t get fixed because whoever cut it
took a big chunk of wire along with him.
Somebody’s trying to hole us up in here
and kill us off. The next thing, they’ll
dynamite the bunkhouses when we’re
asleep. We’re going to get out, whether
Rawlins likes it or not.”

I said: “It doesn’t do any good to
tell me about it, Deiss. I just work here.
I understand Joe Biggers, the boy Lieu¬
tenant Ward shot last night, was a pal
of yours. That right?”

Roger Torrey

“Yeah ! We run around together back
East. He come along because I joined
up. And then he gets killed because
Ward don’t know nothing about a gun.
Ward ought to get life for that play.”

I’d found out what I wanted to know
— and what I’d been afraid of. I said:
“How was it that you happened to tell
me about this?”

“The guys picked me out.”

“It wouldn’t be because you’re back
of all this talk about getting out, would
it?”

“Hell, no!”

“Any idea of why anybody should be
around that cookhouse last night? What
was Biggers doing there?”

“Maybe he was planning on cracking
a window and getting a little something
extra to eat.”

“Listen, Deiss,” I said. “I know you
think you’re a smart guy that knows all
the answers. Now I’m going to do a
little talking. In the first place, Biggers
wasn’t trying to break into the cook¬
house. The cook heard him fooling
around there and caught him at it. He
had a gun and he shot three times at
Lieutenant Ward, before Lieutenant
Ward shot and killed him.” And then I
took a chance and added: “And you
were seen there with Biggers, just before
the trouble started. One of the other
boys saw you and Biggers together.”

“Who seen us? Tell me that.”

I laughed and said: “That will all
come out later, Deiss. You’re skating
on thin ice, fellow. I’d stop this talk
about leaving the camp if I were you.
In other words, Deiss, I’d watch my
step. Right now is no time for trouble¬
making.”

He said, “You go to hell!” and got
up and sauntered out.

T WANTED to lay Deiss across my

lap and paddle him — which might
have been a job because he was almost
as big as I was — but I’d have welcomed
the work right at that time. Then I re¬
membered what he’d said about the tele¬
phone line and went out and over to

the bunkhouse. The boy with the cor¬
poral’s stripes on his sleeve, who’d been
in charge of the detail, was there, and
he was talking to Deiss who hadn’t
wasted a second in getting hold of him.

I said: “What about that line? Can’t
it be fixed?”

He said: “I was just going over to
tell you, Mr. Bryant. Part of it was cut
away and we haven’t anything around
here we can use for a splice. I dropped
down by the creek and told Captain
Rawlins, and he’s got the road almost
fixed by now. He’s going to send a
truck into town right away.”

I said that was fine and turned around
and almost ran into Fred Ardella. He
started to walk back to the office with
me and said, as we went along: “I saw
Deiss talking to you, Mr. Bryant. Hey !
Did he tell you his brother was here last
year? Did he tell you about his brother¬
being a caretaker here, over the win¬
ter?”

I said that was the first I’d heard of
it.

He said: “Yeah! I guess he had a
pretty good time, from what Deiss says,
too. Some of his friends came up and
stayed damn near all winter with him.
They brought a lot of liquor and they
had their wives, or girls, with ’em, and
they must’ve just raised hell. I know
Deiss got canned over it, and then went
back and got in jail. For manslaughter.
It was a stick-up or something, I guess.”

All of a sudden things started to make
sense. I said : “Fred, I want you to do
me a favor. I want you to hang around
with Deiss and never leave him alone
for a minute. Will you do that?”

Fred said: “If he don’t want me
around he’ll tell me to get the hell away.
He’s bigger than I am.”

“Just watch him then.”

“You afraid he’s going to run away?
He’s been talking about it — he’s got
about half the camp in the notion.”

I said : “It’s just that. I’ll depend on
you, Fred.”

He said my trust was well placed and
swaggered away. I think it was one of

Murder — For No Reason

the few times anybody had ever told him
they had any faith in him and I think he
liked the idea a lot.

And then Captain Rawlins came up
the road in the truck — with the bodies.

I said: “I think I’ve got it figured,
Captain, but I’ll have to have help. As
soon as the state police get here, I’ll
start out. But I’d like Lieutenant Ward
to get me a copy of the brand-register
for this county. It will be at the court¬
house.”

“He can get it,” said Rawlins. “And
we won’t wait for the state police, either.
You and I will go. We’ll try and get
this settled before the police get here.
Now what’s this about this young fel¬
low? What’s his name? Deiss?”

I said: “I don’t want him left alone
for a second. He’s too smart. He’s
known what this was all about right
along, I think.”

Rawlins said: “If he knows anything,
I’ll find it out if I have to skin the young
devil alive. There’s been murder done
over this, Mr. Bryant. I mean to know
what it’s all about.”

I said: “O.K. Put on your gun and
I’ll show you. It might even be a good
plan to take along a rifle.”

“Like that, eh?” he said. He looked
a lot happier than he had a moment be¬
fore. “If I can just get my hands on
the devil that cut out that road and shot
that boy last night I won’t need a rifle.
I’ll do what’s proper with my bare
hands.”

But he belted on his gun and took one
of the regulation army Springfields from
the gun rack.

And then we started.

I should have thought of it before. I
had the answer in my hands during the
night, when I’d heard the man who’d
come down by the truck, talking with his
partner. I should have known what had
happened when he complained about his
feet being sore — but the remark hadn’t
tied in with anything at that time. The
news about the caretaker and his friends
was the answer — the thing that made
everything else fall into line. We went

down the road to where I’d gone up
above it and shot at the man on the horse
and then played Indian later. We fol¬
lowed broken brush and horse tracks for
about a mile and then I pointed at a rock
setting fairly in the little path we were
following and said: “I’m right! Isn’t
that blood?”

Rawlins said: “By the Lord Harry!
It is. You’re right.”

I warned : “We might have a long way
to go. I don’t know just how far the
man had to walk.”

“I’ll walk my feet down to the ankles,”
Rawlins said grimly. “Just for one
crack, and I’m going to make it a good
one.”

A couple of miles farther on we found
the horse. Shot through the left hind leg,
high up in the muscle — and again
through the body.

I looked it over and saw it was brand¬
ed 7Y , and said : “O.K ! I’m right. But
I think we’d better go back and wait for
the state police. This is all the evidence
they’re going to need in order to make
an arrest.”

Rawlins said: "I’m an officer, and I
have the same right to arrest, Mr. Bry¬
ant. We’ll follow along as we’ve been
doing.”

That seemed to be that.

CHAPTER FIVE

There Was a Reason

HE RANCH was a
dirty little place and
we’d taken two hours
to get there, from
the spot we’d found
the dead horse. The
house itself was out
in a stumpy field, with no shelter near
except the barn — and that was so flimsy
it offered no protection.

We looked it over, and Rawlins said :
“Well, here it is. And we know what
we’re after. Let’s get going at it, Mr.
Bryant.”

I’d been thinking, all the time since

Roger Torrey

we’d found the horse. I said: “Now
wait a minute. These people, if they’re
the right ones, are facing murder charges
already. If the two of us start walking
across the clearing, and they start shoot¬
ing, they’ll nail us both. We’d be in the
open and they’d be shooting from the
cover of the house.”

He said that was true — and what of
it?

I said: “Look! You’re a crack shot
with a rifle and I’m just fair. You stay
here in the edge of the clearing and keep
ready. I'll go up to the house and see
what it looks like. That way, if anything
should happen, you can hold them and
I can get away.”

He said: “111 go up to the house.
They might possibly start shooting be¬
fore they even talk with you.”

“You’re in uniform — I’m not. They’ll
be curious about me — and they’d know
what you were after. My way’s best.”

He argued, but he knew I was right.
And he so wanted to get the man, or
men, back of the murders that he gave

He grumbled: “All right, go ahead.
Keep that gun handy though. Keep it in
the waistband of your trousers but keep
your coat over it. Maybe they’ll think
you’re unarmed.”

I said I’d do that and started toward
the house. I tried to walk as though I
was just stopping in for a casual how-
d’ya-do, but my knees were shaking so
hard I could hardly get over the ground.
I felt a little bit sick at my stomach and
dizzy as well, because, if I was right, I
was going to meet a cold-blooded delib¬
erate murderer — and there was nothing
but Rawlins and that army rifle to back
me up if it came to trouble. "

I had a feeling it would, too.

T^HE man who opened the door was
^ chewing1' tobacco. He looked me
over, not saying anything, and then spat
tobacco juice so it landed right by my
shoe. He had about a month’s beard on
his face and looked as though he hadn’t
had a bath in six.

He finally said : “Well, mister ! What
might you be after? Hey? What you
doing here?”

I said : “I was just out walking around
and looking over the country. I’m a
stranger here.”

“You’re a - liar,” he said.

“You’re John Bryant’s boy and you
come up to work at that damn camp the
government’s got up on the mountain.
What you snooping around here for,
hey ?”

I didn’t have to answer. A short,
heavy man came to the door and stood
there alongside the man who’d opened
it. He looked me over without saying
a word to me, then said to the first man :
“We’d better gather him in. It’ll just be
one less. My way’s best — we’ll just take
over the camp tonight. Hold the head
guys and to hell with the kids.”

The minute I’d heard him talk I’d
known he was the man I was looking
for. The same one who'd gotten away
the night before. The same one who’d
fixed the trap for the truck and killed
Comiskey and the two boys; The same
one who’d shot the other boy in the road.
His voice was a give-away. He had a
city twang in it you couldn’t mistake.

He said to me :“O.K., wise guy ! You
asked for it and you’re going to get it.
You should keep your nose out of what
don’t concern it. You’re learning too
late.”

I heard somebody inside the house
say, “Who is it Mickey?” and knew
there were at least three of them. And I
knew that if they ever got me inside the
house Rawlins wouldn’t be able to use
that rifle.

I said : “I’ll stay out here.”

He said: “Why you big clown, I’ll
take you apart and see what makes you
tick.” And then he took a step away
from the door toward me. And I took
a step back away from him and yanked
at the gun in my waistband.

He turned then and jumped for the
house door, and he ran into the other
man, who was standing there and star¬
ing. I got tiie gun cleared from my coat

Murder — For No Reason

and started to turn it toward them, but
I was far too slow. They were both out
of sight by the time I got ready to shoot.
A gun banged in the house and a bunch
of splinters showed on the warped boards
not a foot from my head, and I dropped
to the ground, where I could watch the
front door.

FTER a while I
could hear talking
— and then by and
by a hat came pok¬
ing out alongside of
the door-casing. I
didn’t shoot.

I could hear somebody inside say,
“I’m going out!” and hear somebody
else say, “That ain’t the way to do it,
I’m telling you. He can’t get away.”

Then there wasn’t any more talking
for a little while. And then the rifle at
the edge of the clearing went off, sound¬
ing as loud as any cannon, and I heard
somebody shout, around the corner of

the house in back of me. The shout
sounded odd, muffled.

Rawlins called out: "One down,
Bryant! Keep low.”

I shouted back: “I’m going to set fire
to the shack. That’ll bring ’em out —
we’ve got ’em for sure!”

The same man who’d opened the door
called: “Hey, young Bryant! Don’t
burn the place. I ain’t got nothing to
do with this. I’ll have a warrant out for
you if you touch a match to it.”

That was funny but I didn’t have time
to laugh. Somebody inside the house
started shooting through the wall at me,
and I had to get as close to the house as
I could to keep from getting hit. One
of the slugs didn’t miss me by more than
an inch.

Rawlins let go a couple of shots from
the rifle, apparently just trying to scare
them, and then he shouted: “You there
in the house! You can’t get away!
We’ve got you trapped ! Come out with
your hands in the air !”

Roger Torrey

They didn’t answer him but I could
hear them talking among themselves.
And then one of them shouted: “All
right! Here we come!”

Two of them, the same two I’d seen,
came out the door in front of me, telling
me they were going to do it and for me
not to shoot. They had their hands up
above their shoulders.

I called to Rawlins : “There’s still an¬
other one.”

The man I knew was a murderer
snarled : “Get smart, wise guy ! He ran
for it and that guy shot him down like a
rabbit. He’s out in back, deader than a
herring.”

They stood there about ten feet from
the house and with their hands like that
— and Rawlins came walking across the
clearing toward us. He was holding the
rifle down now, with the muzzle slanting
across his body and tipped a little in the
air, but I had my gun pointed at the pris¬
oners. Rawlins was walking along with¬
out looking toward his feet, and he was
stepping as though he were walking on
eggs — just balanced, taking little dainty
steps.

And then he just dropped as though
he’d been shot, shoving the rifle out
ahead of him — and just when a gun
roared inside the house he shot back.
And a man pitched out of the door, not
over five feet in front of my face.

Rawlins called : “That’ll be all of them,
Mr. Bryant, but you’d better make sure.
Go in and look. I’ll cover these men.”

I went in and looked. We had a dead
man in the back yard as well as the one
I’d just seen shot, but that was all except
our two prisoners.

When I got through with my looking
around, Rawlins was standing in front
of them and saying: “And if either of
you open your mouth except to answer
questions, I’ll turn you over to my boys.
They’ll hang you higher than Haman.
I’ll get the straight of this if I have to
stand back and see you lynched to get
it”

I said : “The house is empty, Captain.
Both the other two men are dead.”

He said : “I’m a fair shot if I do say
it myself. These men came out too read¬
ily — I knew there was a trap. So I
thought I’d spring it. Mr. Withers, here,
admits owning the 7Y brand, Mr. Bry¬
ant. There’s nothing else to do. We’ll
march them back and turn them over to
the police. The county coroner can pick
up the bodies. I won’t bother with such
trash.”

I said : “The dead man in back is the
one that held us up in the cookhouse.”

“I’d figured that,” he said.

HAT was all there
was to the thing. We
walked them back to
camp and we got the
story on the way.
Young Deiss’ broth¬
er had robbed a bank,
along with four other men. He’d joined
the C. C. C.’s to keep out of sight for
a while — and he’d taken the caretaker
job, over the winter, for the same reason.
He’d figured it would be a good place
for both himself and his pals. They
joined him and spent part of the winter
with him, all of them expecting the camp
not to open again. And then, when the
government unexpectedly decided to
open, they had to get out in a hurry.
They’d had their bank loot buried under
the cookhouse floor — they got to it by
taking a board from the base of the
building — and they didn’t have time to
get it out.

All of a sudden, trucks loaded with
C.C.C. boys had started pulling into
camp, and they’d left right then because
they couldn’t explain being there. If
there’d been any question about it and
if the law had grabbed them for trespass,
their bank robbery would have came to
light.

Young Deiss’ brother had gone back
to Gary, to wait until things had quieted
down, and got arrested for another
crime. The others just moved in with
Jed Withers, who was a no-good loafer
they’d met during the winter. They’d
tried to get at the money several times

Murder — For No Reason

— but each time something had hap¬
pened and they’d failed. They’d finally
decided to scare the camp away — and
they hadn’t missed it by much at that.

Rawlins admitted to the state trooper
we were talking with : “I’d made up my
mind that if anything else happened I’d
apply for a camp transfer. I was willing
to admit the place was too much for me.”

The trooper said : “This is all well and
good. It explains the shooting of the
boy, in the road, as well as the accident
to the truck. The man you captured ad¬
mits both the shooting and wrecking the
truck, though I’d like to know how you
made that tough egg sign a confession.”

Rawlins said : “The boys were talking
about a lynching. That was all. I let
him hear the talk.”

“That’s well and good, like I said,”
said the trooper, looking now at Lieu¬
tenant Ward. “But there’s this other
boy getting shot. The one called Big-
gers. I realize the lieutenant can claim
self-defense — there’s no doubt about it
being that — but I’ll have to take him in
I’m afraid.”

I said : “I can give you the guilty one
on that, too, Sergeant. One of the bank
robbers was named Deiss — he’s now in
jail in the East for manslaughter. His
brother is with us, and he and this Joe
Biggers, who was shot, were pals. I
think it was like this, but you can read¬
ily find out. Young Deiss knew his
brother had robbed a bank and then
ducked out here to keep out of sight. He
undoubtedly recognized the man who
held us up in the cookhouse as one of his
brother’s confederates in the bank rob¬
bery, though the man wouldn’t recognize
young Deiss.”

“He’d hardly expect to see him here,”
said Rawlins.

“That’s it. Well, the boy put two and
two together and he got five for the an¬
swer. He thought out the reason for the
hold-up — for the attempt at scaring Cap¬
tain Rawlins into vacating the camp. As
everything that happened seemed cen¬
tered around the cookhouse, and as he
knew that’s where that gang spent most

of their time during the winter, from
what his brother had told him, he natur¬
ally assumed that was where the loot
was buried.”

Rawlins said: “And that’s where we
found it.”

"I get it,” the trooper said. “He and
his pal tried to hi-jack the stuff and the
cook caught this young Biggers. Big¬
gers then shot it out with Lieutenant
Ward and got the worst of it. Of course
I’ll have to check with this young Deiss.
I can break him down on it.”

I’ll send for him,” Rawlins offered.
He went out, did so, and after while
when we were just sitting there talking
about what had happened, I heard a
voice say: "Yes, sir. You sent for me?”

We all looked up, and for a moment I
didn’t recognize Deiss. Both his eyes
were black. His mouth was so swollen
that either it, or the two front teeth he’d
lost, kept him from speaking plainly.
His face was all marred and bruised.

Rawlins stared at him and said : “The
officer wants you to answer some ques¬
tions, Deiss, and I want you to answer
them truthfully. My Lord ! What hap¬
pened to you?”

Deiss said: “Fred Ardello and I got
in a scrap, sir.”

“Who started it?”

“Well, he kept following me around
and I told him to go away. It just sort
of started then. I guess maybe I start¬
ed it, sir.”

“He hurt any?” I asked.

Young Deiss looked even more pained
than his bruises allowed for. He said:
“Mister, not one bit. I didn’t know it,
but the kid used to fight in them Golden
Glove things. He whipped me on a dime
and had nine cents change coming. I
never laid a hand on him from start to
finish.”

We all laughed and I left, to tell Fred
Ardello he’d done just fine.

And when I did, young Deiss was
starting to tell the state trooper his
story — and it sounded just the way I’d
figured it would. I went away thinking
I might have a good summer after all.

TEN CARATS OF

three gold balls of his own special province, and that it could only
end when he pulled the correct “blue card” from his “suspected” file.

CHAPTER ONE

Death on the Diamond Exchange

; IKE HANSARD
stood just outside the
£ door as two white-clad
internes wheeled the
' operating carriage
e into the ward-room.
. They left the room si¬
lently without bothering to transfer the
man in the short-sleeved hospital shirt,
to the cot.

A grave-eyed nurse touched Hansard
on the sleeve. “He won’t be out of it for
half an hour. You might have a little
while with him, then.”

The plainclothesman eyed the
strained, weather-beaten face on the pil¬
low. “No chance to pull through?”

She shook her head. “An ordinary
man would’ve died on the table. He _ ”

“Yeah.” Mike’s jaw was rocky. “Guy
gets toughened up after twenty years on
a beat. Makes it that much harder to
check out.”

The nurse moved quietly down the

long corridor. Mike sat down on the cot.

The dying man groaned, stirred a
bandaged arm uneasily. Mike had a
similar bandage on his own arm, where
they’d made the transfusion. But he
didn’t have three bullet holes in his guts,
the way Tom MacReady did. Mike
would have given a lot more than a pint
of blood to help Tom, if he’d had the
chance.

MacReady had gone to bat for him
plenty of times. There was that night
when Mike was new to harness, and the

Cassati crowd had cornered him in a
blind alley and put the lead to him. Tom
hadn’t even been on duty, but he’d heard
the gunfire and come in blasting, just
as Joe Cassati was about to dot Mike’s
eye. There would be a three-inch scar,
somewhere on MacReady’s chest, under
those bandages, that the older man had
carried ever since as a memento of Cas¬
sati.

Mike had been close to Tom in those
rookie days. They both reported to the
reserve-room in the same precinct house.

Stewart Sterling

Both had similar ambitions. But Mike
had passed his qualifying examinations
and gone on up. Tom just couldn’t seem
to make the grade, but that was just be¬
cause some of the gold-braid boys
couldn’t get it through their thick skulls
that MacReady had what it takes to be a
first-class detective and then some.

They knew now — too late. And
they’d be out in force at the funeral, to
give honor to a cop who’d faced a mur¬
derous pistol fire in performance of his
duty. Hansard ground out his cigarette
and cursed helplessly. A hell of a lot of
good official honors would do Tom’s
widow and ten-year old kid!

HE man on the pil¬
low muttered inco¬
herently and rolled
his head from side to
side. He opened his
eyes, stared vacantly

_ . up at the detective.

It was another five minutes before there
was a light of recognition in his gaze,
then he reached out feebly for Hansard’s
hand.

“Hello, Mike,” he whispered hoarsely.

“How you feel, Tom?”

MacReady grimaced. “Not so bad. I
guess they . . . fixed me up O.K.”

“Sure.” Mike grinned cheerfully.
What they had fixed Tom up with had
been a load of morphine. That was all
they could do. “Feel like telling me
what happened?”

The wounded man closed his eyes.
“Ain’t much I can tell, Mike. I’m com¬
ing along Hester Street. To see if old
lady Kruger got her coal from the re¬
lief. When I get to the corner opposite
Dumont’s jewelry store — ” He groaned,
tried to put a hand to his belly, fum¬
bled at the bandages for a little, then
stiffened and lay still.

Hansard lit a cigarette, held it to Mac-
Ready’s lips. “Take a drag, Tom.”

The patrolman inhaled greedily, let
the smoke dribble slowly from his nos¬
trils. “I see these two punks and a dame
huddled in front of Dumont’s window.

When they spot me, they move on kind
of sudden. So I go over to give a peek.”
His voice was weaker, his lips looked
like blue steel. “When I get up close, I
see this Red Cross poster stuck on the
outside of the window. . . .Ah! It does
hurt!”

“Take it easy, old-timer.”

“The old gray mare, Mike, ain’t what
she used to be.” Sweat glistened on
MacReady’s face. He went on, slowly.
“Knew that poster was screwy. Stuck
over hole in the glass. They’d used a
glass-cutter and a suction cup. Half
the junk was gone out of the window.
So I . . . went after ’em.”

“You get a look at them, Tom?”

MacReady licked his lips. “Couldn’t
see ’em clear. Light was bad. They
went ... up the Bowery. Turned in
that alley. Middle of the block.” A
trickle of pink saliva ran out of the cor¬
ner of his mouth. “When I hit the cor¬
ner . . . they jumped me. Didn’t get
a chance. ...” His voice trailed off into
nothing, but his lips continued to work.

Hansard put his ear close to Mac¬
Ready’s mouth.

“Be a while,” the patrolman was gasp¬
ing, “before I ... get back ... to roll
call.”

“A little while, Tom. Yeah.”

“You’ll have to . . . look after it,
Mike.” MacReady’s eyes opened sud¬
denly, very wide. He hoisted himself up
convulsively, on one elbow. “They as¬
signed you ... to the case . . . didn’t
they, Mike? It’s a hockshop case . . .
ain’t it?”

“Sure it is. Inspector put me on it
personal.”

“That’s O.K. . . . then.” The patrol¬
man fell back limply. “Long as . . .
you’re on it, Mike.” His eyes glazed.
He fought to focus them on the man
bending over him. “When’ll . . . Mary
and Steve ... be over ... to see me?”

“Ought to be here any minute, Tom.
Any minute, now.”

There wasn’t any answer. The faded
blue eyes stared fixedly up at the ceil¬
ing.

Ten Carats of Lead

Hansard took out his watch, rubbed
the back to mirror brightness on his vest,
held it to MacReady’s lips. After a min¬
ute he put the watch back in his pocket.

“You sure got lousy breaks, pal. You
sure did. I don’t know if anything can
be done to balance the books for you,
but I’ll give it a try, Tom.”

He rang the bell on the wall.

N THE shadow of the
El, the street was dark
and gloomy, but the op¬
posite side of the Bow¬
ery was a blaze of naked
| electric bulbs over daz-
! zling displays of silver-
plate and glittering rows of gaudy gems.
One jewelry store crowded against an¬
other, elbowing for space in this brilliant
white light of Little Maiden Lane.

As Mike stalked toward the
sign— D U M O NT’S - DIA¬

MOND S — he saw a bulky-shouldered
man lounging in the doorway. When
Hansard angled toward the Red Cross
poster on Dumont’s window, the man
stepped out into the light. His eyes were
narrow slits in a brick-red face. He had
his right hand in his coat pocket and
his voice was brusque.

"Keep movin’, mister . . . right along,
now. Right along.”

Hansard didn’t even bother to show
his badge. “Crysake, don’t you Ames
dummies know a cop when you see one ?”

The representative of the Ames Patrol
took his hand out of his coat pocket. “I
ain’t takin’ no chances. Buddy of mine
had the switch snapped on him a little
while ago, right up there on the cor¬
ner.”

“Yeah. An’ he might be alive now if
you stuck to your post, way you’re sup¬
posed to, shamus,” Mike said curtly.
“What’s your name?”

“Brundage.” The Ames man was
surly. “Don’t be telling me my busi¬
ness. I know what I’m supposed to do
and what I ain’t. I been assigned to
this corner for two years. Me an’ Tom
MacReady always got along jake. He

never made no complaint. An’ none of
our subscribers got any squawk — ”

“MacReady ain’t exactly in a position
to complain. Far as your customers are
concerned, why should they holler ?
They’re covered by insurance, aren’t
they?” Hansard went over to the win¬
dow, ripped off the poster, looked at
the six-inch hole the glass-cutter had
made. “But that isn’t saying there aren’t
going to be plenty of beefs about this.
There’ve been too many of these glass-
cutter jobs in the last two-three weeks.
It’ll be the same mob back of all of ’em.
Now they’ve gone up against a chair-
job, everybody’ll get put on the pan
about it. Where was you when the fire¬
works went off?”

Brundage jerked his thumb over his
shoulder. “Down on Hester. Kid came
up and told me somebody’d heaved a
brick at Thomasini’s window. That We
Buy Old Gold joint. So I beat it down
there. It was a false alarm. So then I
hear the shooting and hike back.” He
shifted uneasily under Hansard’s cold
stare. “I called an ambulance for Mac-
Ready.”

“Yeah?” Hansard morosely studied
the vacant spaces in Dumont’s display.
The robbers had been smart. They
hadn’t taken any watches or any of the
cheap “slum” that’s used to catch the
eye of the passerby. The stuff that was
missing was mostly rings, he decided.

“Got a key, Brundage?”

The Ames man produced a ring at¬
tached to his belt with a steel chain. “I
ain’t s’posed — ”

“Suppose my eye!” growled the
plainclothesman. “Open up!”

Brundage used a key. Hansard went
in first, inspected the alarm box on the
wall, saw it hadn’t been tampered with.
Then he found a phone, got through to
headquarters.

“Extension four-o-two ... Ed
Schmidt ... Ed? I’m down at Du¬
mont’s. Put through a thirty-one, will
you? All cars. Rush. Have ’em con¬
tact every hockshop in the city. Notify
us of anyone trying to pawn any soli-

Stewart Sterling

taires worth over — say fifty bucks. Or
any unset stones more than a quarter-
carat. They’ll probably pry the stones
out of the settings. ... I know, I know.
It’s a hundred-to-one shot. Still and all,
it’s one of those things we gotta cover,
Ed.” He hung up.

TJRUNDAGE shook his head dubious-
ly. “You ain’t gonna lay the fin¬
ger on the lads who did this job just
by puttin’ the peep on the hockshops.
This mob was from out of town.”

“Why do you think so?”

“I seen their car.”

“Where?”

“Couple of blocks down. Green sedan
with Jersey pads.”

Hansard swore and reached for the
phone again. “Why the hell didn’t you
say so when I was talking to headquar¬
ters! How did you know it was their
car?”

“Well, I don’t — for sure. But it was
there when I beat it down on Hester,
and it wasn’t there when I got back.
Then that old hag selling pretzels down
on the corner claims there was two guys
and a frill came running over to the
sedan and drove away like a bat outa — ”

“Hello, Ed? Something to add to that
alarm. All cars to notify all men on
post. Pick up a green sedan. . . . What
make, Brundage?”

“Buick, near as I noticed.”

a Buick, maybe, Ed. Or any
other green sedan with Jersey plates.
Two men and a girl in it. . . . Nah, this
Ames dope I’m talking to never heard
about getting a license number. So
long.”

The headquarters man reached out,
caught the private guard’s necktie,
yanked him close. “How many times
you been told to take the plate numbers
of any car parks near the Diamond Ex¬
change after closing hours?”

“Leggo,” snarled Brundage, “you’re
chokin’ me! I don’t know when that
sedan parked there. They’s a lot of Jer¬
sey hockers come over to do business
before closing hours an’ leave their cars

around here while they grab a bite. Any¬
how, I told you I was in a hurry to
check up on that rock-throwin’. If it
hadn’t been for that — ”

“Yah!” Hansard sent him reeling
back against one of the glass cases.
“You don’t stay on your post. You don’t
check on parked cars. You’d ought to
have your watchman’s license revoked.
You had sense enough to notify the pro¬
prietor, here?”

“I tried to get Dumont on the phone.
He wasn’t home.”

“Where’s he live?”

“Over in Brooklyn.”

“Well, try him again. Send him a
wire — collect. Ask the phone company
to give him a bell every five minutes un¬
til they get him. But get him over here.”

“I’ll do the best I can.”

“And soon as you see him, get me a
complete check-list of all the ice that
was glommed. I want the number of
stones in each ring, the carat weights,
settings — ”

“Sure, I know.”

“You don’t know your rump from a
hole in the ground. If you get hold of
anything phone it in to headquarters,
extension four-o-two. And don’t be
leaving Dumont’s here to run around
and see if you can locate somebody who
can give you a description of those three.
We’ll take care of that without any ama¬
teur kibitzing.”

Hansard got out of the store, up to the
comer of the alley. He half expected
some of the Homicide boys to be down
there, but maybe the word hadn’t gotten
through that MacReady had died. Or
perhaps they’d come and snapped their
photographs and were now combing the
district for eyewitnesses. . . .

The sharp contrast between the blind¬
ing brilliance of the row of windows at
the Diamond Exchange and the utter
pitch-blackness of the alley made it diffi¬
cult for him to adjust his eyes quickly.
He slipped on something greasy under¬
foot.

He put his flash on it and his nostrils
flared in repugnance. This was where

Ten Carats of Lead

Tom had taken it. He swung the circle
of light up and down the cobblestones.
Besides MacReady’s blood, there was
nothing to see except a couple of those
small, white, slotted cards in which rings
are displayed. Each card bore the cap¬
tion — Absolutely Perfect Blue-White —
— 22 -Car at Setting— Latest Style.

A couple of chunks of limestone had
been chipped from the building wall by
flying lead but there was nothing else.

CHAPTER TWO

The Girl in the Hock Shop

IKE strode grimly
through the alley, over
to Centre Street, up to
the block-long white
stone building at
Number 240.

He went down a
freshly scrubbed corridor smelling of an¬
tiseptic, turned in at a door marked —

DETECTIVE BUREAU - LOST

PROPERTY DIVISION.

There was a long counter running
across the front of the room, behind it
half a dozen small oak desks. There
was only one man in the office, a thin,
sharp-featured individual with glossy
black hair, shaggy eyebrows and an ex¬
pression of perpetual surprise on his
face. He sat in a swivel chair, with his
feet up on the lower drawer of his desk.
This was. Ed Schmidt, Hansard’s work¬
ing-partner. He was drawling into a
telephone.

“Yeah, that’s what I said. Report by
phone and pronto. That don’t mean you
shouldn’t send in the regular descrip¬
tive cards on everything that’s been
hocked in your shop today. If I don’t
get a brown envelope with a bunch of
those cards from you in the morning
I’ll know you’ve either gone out of busi¬
ness or you’re trying to give us the run¬
around, Abe. But about those solitaires
— it’s important. They’re hot as the
electric chair.’’

Hansard sat at his desk and gloomily
fingered the day’s list of property, lost
and stolen. There were wallets reported
from the midtown section. Their only
chance of recovery lay across the hall
in the offices of the pickpocket squad.
Another epidemic of lost dogs in the
Washington Heights area probably
meant that the old “dog racket” was
being worked again. And there was the
usual assortment of missing handbags,
wrist-watches and briefcases — mostly
testimonials to their owner’s forgetful¬
ness.

None of these held any interest for
Mike. He would let the other boys on
the squad look after them. By that tacit
understanding which goes without ex¬
pression in the police department, it was
accepted that Hansard was after the mob
that had shot down his friend, and that
he would let nothing interfere with that
job until it was done.

He knew that the likelihood of his
finding the killers was remote, unless he
had a streak of luck. For there would

Stewart Sterling

be little doubt that this was the work of
the same crowd that had bedeviled the
pawnshop squad for nearly three weeks,
with window-hole robberies from one
end of Manhattan to the other.

“Mike,” called the other man, hang¬
ing up the phone, “I got that file of lugs
who’ve been involved in window rob¬
beries, from the Bureau of Identification.
Covers twelve years. About sixty guys.
But more than half of ’em are doing
their home-work up at Stone College.”

“Let me have a look-see, Eddie.”
Mike shuffled over the identification
cards, with full-face and profile photos.
“None of these answer the descriptions
given by any of the bystanders at the
other robberies, huh, Ed?”

“Not as near as I can make out. But
we might as well go through the rou¬
tine.”

“Let Homicide do it, Eddie. They
can put more men on it than we can.
And anyhow, I got an idea it’s a waste
of time. I think this is a new mob, just
organized.”

The way they’re going at it, Mike” —
Schmidt came over and put a police fly¬
er from San Francisco headquarters on
Hansard’s desk — “it looks to me as if
they’re old hands. Seven jobs, they’ve
pulled. Nobody’s caught ’em. Nobody’s
even got a cast-iron description. That
takes some experience.”

“Yeah. I guess so, Eddie.” Mike
studied the flyer.

It was an old one. It stated that all
police departments should be on the
lookout for William Sexton, recently a
resident of San Francisco. Sexton was
an expert at window work, had cleaned
out five jewelry stores in one night and
departed for places unknown. His meth¬
od had been to use a couple of stooges to
stand on either side of him, apparently
inspecting the contents of a show-win¬
dow, while he used a window-glass cut¬
ter, calmly inserted a cane with a wad
of chewing gum on it and picked up such
items as his fancy dictated. After the
desired merchandise had been ab¬
stracted, the busy Mr. Sexton would

calmly paste a poster of some sort over
the small hole and depart.

“This looks good,” Mike grunted.
“Only there’s no photo.”

“Good reason why,” Schmidt pointed
out. “They never caught him. They
picked up that dope from stoolies.
Wouldn’t you say this Sexton might be
our man?”

“It’s a thought. All we got to go on
is — five feet six or seven, hundred and
sixty pounds or thereabouts, brown hair,
brown eyes. I can’t walk from here to
Broome Street without bumping into
half a dozen guys would answer that
description. Tell you what, Ed. Wire
Frisco. Ask ’em if they’ve got any later
dope on this punk.”

“O.K.”

“And send out a teletype to all states
we got working agreements with, giv¬
ing his description. Include the green
sedan in the Jersey notice. And warn
all of ’em to be on the lookout for any¬
body trying to hock or sell unset ice.”

“Anything else, Mike?”

“Yeah. Check over the lists of arrests
MacReady made, the last four-five years.
See if any of those bums had any jewel¬
ry-store robberies in their records. I
have a hunch maybe this slob who shot
him, did it because Mike knew him and
put the pinch on him at some previous
time.”

The phone rang. Schmidt answered.
“Yeah? Hold the line a second, Elias.”
He put his hand over the receiver.
“Litzman calling. Up on Sixth Avenue.
Says there’s a floozie trying to put the
bite on him for two hundred bucks on a
rock worth six or seven C’s anyway.
Wants to know what to do with her.”

“Tell him to stall her. Kid her along.
Haggle with her. Tell him if he lets
her go before I get up there, I’ll dig
that old receiver charge up and slap him
in the jug for sure.” Mike grabbed his
overcoat, got to the door. “And Ed — ”

“Yuh?”

“Tell him to work it so he gets her
prints. On his showcase. Or maybe a
fountain pen.”

Ten Carats of Lead

He got into the corridor before
Schmidt yelled : “Want I should notify
the radio Rollos?”

“No,” Mike called back. “I’ll do
that. If I need ’em.”

ANSARD’S coupe hit
nothing but the high
spots on the way up¬
town. This might be a
wrong lead, of course.
No telling whether the
skirt at Litzman’s was
the same one Tom MacReady had
spotted down on Little Maiden Lane.
But if she wasn’t, it was a damn queer
coincidence. Women didn’t do much legi¬
timate pawning late at night. That was a
male trick, for booze money. Women
usually did their hocking in the daytime,
when they could buy something they
needed with the money they got. But if
this was the same dame, seconds might
count. Litzman might not be able to stall
her off, for long. She’d be sure to get
suspicious.

Still, there was something screwy
about the set-up. That window- job had
certainly been done by a professional
mob of heisters. Yet no gem thief would
be dumb enough to suppose he could
get away with panning a piece of glitter
within a couple of hours after the stuff
had been lifted.

It was ten minutes past nine when
Mike got out, a block below Litzman’s.
He forced himself to stroll leisurely
toward the hockshop — past a couple of
employment agencies.

It wouldn’t do to come tearing into
the shop. There might be a lookout wait¬
ing outside, or across the street. That
was why he hadn’t wanted the radio
cars notified. A lookout would have
spotted police cars before they could
have closed in and given the alarm.

He turned in, hesitantly, under a din¬
gy sign from which hung three tarnished
gilt balls. The window was plastered,
inside, with a miscellaneous network of
watches, binoculars, shotguns, revolvers,
banjoes, carpenter’s levels, flutes, fish¬

ing rods. Phony “flash wares” bought
at auction, Hansard knew, for sale to
overwise suckers.

The girl was still there. She was talk¬
ing earnestly to Elias down at the far
end of the counter. A bleached-out
aluminum blonde with plenty of curvet
where they counted, and a pinched, sharp
little face with too much rouge and lip¬
stick on it. She wore a short seal jacket
over a thin blue silk dress, and if Mike
Hansard was any judge, she was scared
silly about something.

“Won’t you please hurry,” she was
saying, shrilly, to the two men behind
the counter. “I tell you I’ve got to catch
a train.”

Old Elias Litzman looked at her mild¬
ly over his steel-rimmed spectacles and
fingered his scraggly beard thoughtfully.
“In a transaction of this size, it is neces¬
sary to make out the papers correctly. I
have my pawnshop license to protect — ”

“I understand. But I’ve given you all
the information you’ve asked for.”

“How do you spell your first name,
Miss Sampson. Or here” — the pawn¬
broker deferentially handed her his pen
— “if you will just fill this in, yourself.
Full name and address. Phone number,
if you have one. ...”

The girl wrote eagerly.

Hansard rested his elbows wearily on
the counter, took his watch out of his
pocket as if he were greatly embarrassed.

The younger Litzman came up to him,
briskly. “You wish to make a loan, gen¬
tleman?” He slid a slip of white paper
under Mike’s hand.

“Like to get about five-six bucks on
the turnip. It’s worth twenty-five, at
least.”

On the slip he read —

Stones: One diamond
Weight: One and one half carats
Setting: 22k. yellow gold
Inscriptions: None
Maker’s name: None

Mike tucked the pawnbroker’s rec¬
ord unobtrusively away in his pocket.
“I got to have five dollars, anyway.”

Stewart Sterling

Under his breath he added: " Nobody
with her, Sol?”

Sol Litzman examined the watch’s
movement with professional disdain.
“Five I couldn’t let you have. Watches
like them are positively a drag on the
market, these days. Maybe three.” He
whispered: "All alone, Mr. Hansard.”

“You can sell it for fifteen. A fella
offered me fifteen.”

Sol shrugged, scornfully. “You should
taken it.”

“Gimme five seeds on it.” Mike mur¬
mured : "Ever seen her before?”

“Where’d you get this watch, mister.
You’re so anxious to get rid of it, maybe
it ain’t yours. Never laid eyes on her, so
help me."

“It’s mine,” Hansard grumbled.
“Those are my initials, inside the case,
there. What’s her say-so?”

“ Claims she’s a show-girl. Used to be
in burly. Out of a job. Claims she’s had
the ring couple of years, Guy gave it to
her.” Sol laid the watch on the counter,
with an air of finality. “Three-fifty is
absolutely our outside limit, my friend.
Take it or leave it.”

“I’ll split the difference. Make it four,
huh? You think she’ £ leveling, Sol?”

“Well, so I’ll do it. If you don’t come
back and redeem it, I lose money, I’m
telling you. We put the ring under the
glass, Mr. Hansard. She’s lying, posi-
tiely. Ring ain’t ever been worn by no¬
body. Anyway, showgirl’s rings always
got a little grease paint on ’em that hold
the dust under the setting points. There
ain’t no dust of any sort under the
points on this ring. Write out your full
name and address, please.”

Mike spoke without moving his lips.
" How much will she take?”

“Here’s four dollars, mister. She come
down to a hundred-fifty."

“Much obliged. I’ll be back for the
watch. Give it to her. I’ll be responsible
for it.”

Sol turned toward the green steel cab¬
inet back of the counter. As he did so,
he nodded almost imperceptibly to his
father. And as the plainclothesman

slouched toward the door, he could hear
old Elias saying : “I take a chance, young
lady. Actual I ain’t got a right to let
you have the money. But you say you
got to get to San Francisco. You give
me your word. Absolutely you redeem
the ring, so I make an exception ...”

ANSARD glanced
back through the in¬
tervening lacework of
opera glasses, ukeleles,
cocktail sets, drawing
instruments. The girl’s
head was thrown back.
She was drawing a deep breath as if a
terrible load had been lifted from her
shoulders. This could be the frill Mac-
Ready had seen. It was the type of ring
that had been stolen , from Dumont’s
place. He had been able to tell from the
vacant spots in the jeweler’s window that
most of the rings had been “engagement
specials.”

He surveyed the street. Between For¬
ty-sixth and -seventh there was only an
elderly couple strolling leisurely. No cars
at the curb, just a battered baker’s truck
parked in front of a Coffee Pot, down
at the next corner.

Mike slid into the doorway next to
Litzman’s. He’d tail her, see who she
met, where she went. Maybe the mob
had been desperate for dough, had to
make a fast touch to get out of town.
In that case . . .

She was coming. She was almost run¬
ning as she pushed open the door, but
she glanced warily up and down the
block before she walked quickly down¬
town.

She got about ten paces when the
baker’s truck moved jerkily out from the
curb.

The man behind the wheel was a
horse-faced individual with an ugly scar
slashing down from one corner of his
mouth. Hansard saw the glint of metal
in the driver’s hand.

That was enough warning for Mike.

“Hey, kid,” he yelled. “Watch that
truck!”

Ten Carats of Lead

She saw it at the same instant,
screamed, turned and fled back for the
shelter of the pawnshop doorway.

The truck speeded up. Little jets of
orange flame began to spit from a hole
in the side panel of the truck. Glass
shattered above Hansard’s head as he
put out a foot, tripped the girl so she
sprawled flat on the sidewalk.

The staccato bark of an automatic rifle
echoed hollowly in the empty street. The
heavy flat report from Mike’s Police
Positive crashed thunderously through
the more brittle sound of the rifle-fire.

Something licked out with a hot
tongue at his cheek. He dropped to one
knee and aimed carefully as the gray
truck roared past.

The door and window of the pawn¬
shop disintegrated in a jangling shatter
of broken glass.

At his feet the girl squealed, once —
and lay still.

Mike fired at the driver, saw the
windshield smash, put another bullet
halfway down in the front door by the
driver’s seat. Then the truck was past.
Lead smacked into the door jamb beside
him as he thumbed fresh cartridges into
his pistol, sent a burst of slugs at a rear
tire. He heard the tire go, saw the truck
swerve crazily around a corner.

A police whistle shrieked. Behind him,
heavy feet pounded on pavement. Han¬
sard stood up, flipped his left hand in the
horizontal palm-up, fingers-back gesture
that says “Pm a cop,” everywhere.

A harsh voice behind him grated:
"Which way they’d go?”

“ ’Round the corner,” snapped Mike.
“Gray truck. Tire gone. Watch it. They
got a chatter gun — ”

The patrolman raced for the corner.

W- JsSOT ANSARD knelt beside

I vPjWL* S'r*- Llis attempt to
protect her had failed.
K /MyJHfcK* One of those half-inch
S*USS from that automa-
I jrarMlK t*c r'^e had ricocheted
*rntTI the metal casing
of the pawnbroker’s window, caught her

in the throat. She was still alive but
when she tried to speak, a red froth
bubbled from her lips and her eyes
glazed.

Behind Hansard, old Litzman was
screeching like a maniac. “Look, nu!
Look what you done. A tip-off I give
you and right away is shooting, is kill¬
ing . . .”

“Shut up, Papa,” yelled his son. “You
ain’t hurt. That poor girl, she’s dead.”

A radio car came down the avenue
with a banshee wail, slid to a screaming
stop. Two uniformed men came over
cautiously, guns drawn.

Mike said: “Hansard. Headquarters
hockshop squad. Shield one-seven-two-

One of the officers had a sergeant’s
chevrons on his sleeve. He glanced down
at the girl, looked up at the left side of
Mike’s face. “They get you bad?”

Mike put his fingers up, touched his
cheek. It was warm and wet. There was
a jagged cut a couple of inches long
where a splinter of glass had ripped him.

“Cut myself shaving,” he gritted.
“Tell the broadcasting boys to put out
a thirty-one for an old Ford truck. Gray
panel job. Two men, both armed. One’s
a guy with a long, narrow face. He’s
got an inch scar at the right side of his
mouth. I didn’t see the other guy. He’s
the one hit this kid with the stutter gun.”

The sergeant motioned to his partner.
“Phone inside. Headquarters, first.
Then a meat- wagon.” The patrolman
pushed open the shattered door, got in
to the telephone.

The muscles in Mike’s jaws twitched.
“Same two who put the clutch on a flock
of stones in a Bowery jewelry store and
knocked off Tom MacReady, coupla
hours ago, Sarge. The blonde here was
in on the heist. She pulled a fast one on
her pals, must’ve wanted to take a pow¬
der. She tried to hock a piece of ice here
with Litzman. They followed her. When
she came out of the shop, they drove up
and let her have it. I winged the lug
who had the wheel. ” He bent down and
picked up the girl’s gilt-mesh bag.

Stewart Sterling

The sergeant sheathed his gun.
“Where’d this truck come from?”

Hansard jerked his head toward the
Coffee Pot. “Parked in front of the
scoff-shop down there. Might be some
of the boys inside got an idea where it
came from, but I doubt it. This was the
same outfit who were supposed to be
riding around in a green Buick sedan.
The truck was probably stolen, half an
hour ago.”

“I’ll drop in the lunch counter.” The
sergeant bent over to get a good look at
the girl’s face. “This dame didn’t work
this part of town. I’ll guarantee that.”

“Might not be from New York at all.”
Mike’s face was stem. “But the finger¬
print boys’ll find out. This mob that
knocked her off has gone kill-crazy. If
we don’t put the clamps on ’em — ■”

“Yeah.” The sergeant pulled out his
report book. “They might’ve holed in,
right close by here. We’ll give this pre¬
cinct a going over. Don’t worry about
that. I knew Tom MacReady. He was
a right cop.”

“One of the best,” Mike agreed.

The other officer ran out of the hock-
shop. “Tunnels and ferries and bridges
all blocked. There’ll be an ambulance
here in a couple of minutes.”

“Thanks.” Mike stepped over the
girl’s body. “Get something to cover
that up, will you? I’m going inside a
minute. I’ll stick around till Homicide
gets here, anyway.”

CHAPTER THREE

Lily Doesn’t Work Here Any More

NSIDE old Elias was
blubbering incoherent¬
ly, in a frenzy of fear.
Sol was still trying to
calm him. Mike spilled
the contents of the
girl’s bag out on the
counter-top. Lipstick, cigarettes, gum,
an address book full of phone numbers,
a couple of old letters without the en¬
velopes, a purse, some hair-pins and a
few keys.

Mike opened the purse. There was a
roll of bills, a couple of dollars in silver.
He tossed the currency across the coun¬
ter.

“Tear up that ticket, Sol. Here’s the
dough. Lemme have the ring.”

The younger Litzman took the money
as if it was a scorpion, went to the safe.
Mike pawed over the miscellany on the
counter, put the stuff back in the bag.
The letters were addressed to Dearest
Daughter and were signed Mama. There
wasn’t anything in them to tell who the
daughter was, or where she lived or
anything about her except that her moth¬
er was glad she was so well and happy
with her work.

The names in the address book were
Phils and Johns and Pauls and Bobs —
no women. Most of the phone exchanges
were in the midtown office section.

Tucked away in the back of the book,
where he hadn’t noticed it before, was a
little piece of blue paper about three
inches long and an inch wide. It was
a remitter’s receipt from the American
Express Company for a money order.
It was for twenty bucks, was made out
to F. O. Marshal, signed by L. Marsh.

He went over to the telephone, worked
the dial. After a second Schmidt came
on.

“Ed? Saw some wood for me, will
you? . . . Yeah ... I want to know
who L. Marsh was. The skirt who was
with the two who put the burn on Mac-
Ready. They just fixed her up with a
slug, too. L. Marsh is the name. I don’t
know anything about her except she’s a
five-buck floozie. But she sent an ex¬
press money order to someone named
F. O. Marshal on April twenty-second.
Number is 1317522. Get me an address,
Ed . . . Yeah, I’m still at Litzman’s.”

Outside the ambulance slid to the curb
with bell clanging and bloodshot head¬
lights. The emergency interne came in
and swabbed off Mike’s cheek with
something that stung like fire.

“Y’oughta come back to the hospital.
Have this treated right, officer.”

“Later, maybe. Just do your stitch-in-

Ten Carats of Lead

time stuff, doc. I got a rush job on
hand.”

The interne got out the needle.

Sol brought the ring to the plain-
clothesman while the suture was being
threaded into the flesh of Mike’s cheek.

“It ain’t the plate glass, Mr. Hansard,
or the damage inside the shop here. But
nobody’ll come near us now. A thing
like this’ll ruin us, honest. Especially if
it gets out that the poor girl was borrow¬
ing a little money from us and got mur¬
dered like that, right after. Couldn’t you
tell those newspaper men that it was
accidental, that she just happened to be
in front of our place of business ...”

Mike couldn’t talk back. He mumbled
“No” as well as he could.

“There you are, officer.” The interne
slapped gauze and collodion over the
wound. “Come around in a couple days
and have it dressed.”

"Sure.” Hansard grinned lopsidedly.
“That’ll be fun.”

The interne went out to help put the
girl’s body on a stretcher.

Sol held out his hands, despairingly,
to Mike. “Suppose those killers come
back. Maybe they’ll think Papa and I
could identify them.”

“They know damn well 7 can. So
they’ll come after me, first. Long as
I’m alive you don’t have to work up a
sweat about it. There’s your phone.
Maybe that’s Ed Schmidt.”

It was. “Jeeze, Mike. I just got the
news over the short-wave. They get you
bad?”

"Only a scratch, Ed. You get that
address?”

“Yeah. I don’t know if it’s the right
one. But the Express people say Lily
Marsh lives at Four-seventy-eight West
Seventy-second Street. Know what that
is ?”

“Riding academy, Ed?”

“That’s what they tell me. I wouldn’t
know. I’m a married man, myself. But
you’re white, single and over twenty-one,
so — ”

“Go to hell, Eddie. Any other stuff
come in?”

“Not from hockshops. Word about
the truck”

“What?”

“Picked up what was left of it on
West Forty-eighth. They’d folded it
over a hydrant. Bloodstains on the up¬
holstery of the driver’s seat. You
must’ve nicked one of ’em.”

“I hope. That wouldn’t even up the
score, either. Any report from that stupe
in the Ames patrol?”

"Yeah. He’s got Dumont down at the
store. Want me to cover it?”

“No. Stick to that phone for the time
being. I’ll have a look at the Marsh
hangout and then run down to Du¬
mont’s.”

The Homicide boys rolled up in two
black cars, brought out their print kits
and cameras, questioned Mike for a few
minutes. Then he left them there, with
the assistant medical examiner making
chalk-marks around the body. He got to
his car, tramped on the button up
through Central Park, turned west at
Seventy-second.

HE ground floor of
number 478 was occu¬
pied by a glorified
lunch counter, with
shiny red-1 e a t h e r
stools and lots of
chromium and glass-
brick. There was a big neon sign flash¬
ing over the door. Every couple of sec¬
onds the crimson-and-green tubing pro¬
claimed — THE M EATING PLACE
.... Where Gourmets Gather ....

There was a little hallway off at one
side, a row of letter-boxes with name-
cards in them. None of the cards bore
the name of Marsh or Marshal.

Mike went up a carpeted flight. At
the head of the stairs, behind an oval
marble-top table, sat an enormously fat
woman in a black lace dress. Her eyes
peered out slyly from puckers of pink
flesh. There was no way of telling where
her chin ended and her bosom began.
She patted a crown of permanent curls

Stewart Sterling

with pudgy fingers covered with dia¬
monds, and leered ingratiatingly.

“Evening, sweetheart. Which one of
the girls did you wanna see?”

Mike grinned amiably. “Lily Marsh.
She in?”

The madame’s lips made an O ! “She
ain’t honey. But maybe you’d like t’
make the acquaintance of a cute little
redhead. She’s — ” The fat woman
stopped and squinted at the gold badge
Mike was holding in the palm of his
hand. Then she giggled. Her jowls
shivered with merriment. “You’re a man
who can take a joke, aren’t you, officer?
I like a man who can stand for a little
kidding once in a while.” She reached
down, pulled up her skirts, brought out
a wad of bills from its stocking hide-out.

Hansard waved a hand. “Once in a
while. But not tonight. Which is Lily’s
room?”

She put both hands flat on the marble,
levered herself erect. “You ain’t gonna
get rough, or anything like that, are
you?”

“Not unless I have to.” Mike’s smile
was still agreeable but his eyes were
frosty. “Which room?”

“Front, right.” The stout woman
pointed. “Want a key?”

“I don’t want to kick the door down.”
He held out his hand. From somewhere
in the folds of her dress she produced a
flat key. “Just sit right down there
again. Act natural. Don’t bother to tip
off anybody. Just go right on as if I
wasn’t around. Probably in a few min¬
utes I won't be.”

“I always play ball, officer. It’s the
safest way.”

He went toward the front of the house,
used the key. He kicked the door open,
stood to one side. The room was pitch-
dark, the shades were drawn in the win¬
dows looking down onto the street, al¬
though through them Mike could see
the dull claret glare of the MEATING
PLACE sign at regular intervals. There
was an odor of musky perfume.

He held his gun in his right hand,
felt around for the light-switch, with

his left. An unseen hand gripped his left
wrist, jerked him off balance !

Mike wrenched himself free, but not
before a two-foot length of lead pipe had
smashed down across the back of his
neck, half stunning him. He crashed for¬
ward, to his knees. A foot stamped sav¬
agely on his gun-hand, crunching the
knuckles. The shoe, which had come
within the detective’s blurred vision,
booted the revolver out of his grasp.

T^HE door slammed behind him, light
flooded the room "from rose-shaded
bulbs in the ceiling. Hansard gazed up,
groggily. Two men stood over him. One
was short and squat. His arms were so
long his hands hung almost to his knees.
His face was long and narrow. There
was a scar twisting down the right cor¬
ner of his mouth. The left sleeve of his
coat had a jagged tear in it. The fabric
was soaked with something that looked
like port wine.

The other man was tall and slender,
with a boy’s pink cheeks and flax-colored
hair that waved as if it had been mar¬
celled. He wore a suit of pearl-gray
gabardine, a wine-red shirt and an apple-
green tie. Neither of the two faces above
him had been among the photographs
Ed Schmidt had taken from the Bureau
of Identification, Hansard decided.

The tall youth spoke languidly. “Don’t
waste time giving him the toe, Gorilla.
Use the pipe.”

The squat man grunted, swung clum¬
sily with the chunk of lead. Mike did
his best to roll away from the blow, but
took it on the shoulder. His left arm
felt as if it were paralyzed.

“He’s one of them he-guys, Babe,”
spat the Gorilla. “Got guts.”

“Never mind his guts, George. I want
his brains smeared on the carpet. And
make it snappy. He might have a partner
hanging around somewhere.”

Mike wished to God he’d had sense
enough to lug Ed Schmidt along. Maybe
he could summon help, if that fat dame
in the hall wasn’t in on the play. He
tried to cry out, but the smash on the

Ten Carats of Lead

back of his neck had done something to
his vocal cords. He could only whisper.

The Gorilla could still talk all right
though. “Can’t I have a little fun with
him, Babe. It ain’t every day — ”

“Kill him! Kill him now,” insisted
Babe in an ugly high-pitched squeak.
"Cave his skull in. Knock his teeth out
afterwards, for souvenirs, if you want to.
I don’t give a damn. But finish him off,
first.”

Gorilla George measured his distance,
swung down his arm.

Mike twisted, rolled, stumbled to his
feet.

Babe was leveling a gun at him, five
feet away. The detective could see the
bright blue eyes sighting along the bar¬
rel.

There was no time to make a decision.
Babe would put a shot through his heart
in another split second. And if the slug
missed, the Gorilla would be on him and
next time that lethal pipe would smash
home.

Mike acted almost without thinking.
As Babe’s finger tightened on the trigger
and the Gorilla’s grunt of rage came
close behind him, Hansard leaped.

Through the window ....

He took shade, curtain and sash with
him. The glass crash was loud enough
to smother the crack of Babe’s gun. Mike
didn’t feel the impact of a bullet. But at
that particular instant he didn’t think it
mattered much. One way or another, he
was probably checking out. Unless his
estimate of distance had been exactly
right !

He could hear the warning yells of
pedestrians below as he burst out over
the sill. It wouldn’t do any good to brace
himself, but he couldn’t help it. Some¬
thing came up, slammed into him with
terrific force. He grunted with the shock,
but it wasn’t the sidewalk, and it hadn’t
knocked him goofy.

He’d guessed right, then. The narrow,
flat surface beneath him, that had
stopped his fall, was the top of the
M EATING PLACE sign. It was di¬
rectly under Lily’s window.

Women screamed from below. Mike
twisted around to look down. There was
a vicious stab of agony at his right side.
That must be a cracked rib. The pain
made him dizzy. He put out a hand to
steady himself, knocked aside a length
of hot tubing, saw the sign beneath him
flicker and dim.

He gritted his teeth, got his knees un¬
der him, crawled backward till his heels
touched the building.

A traffic cop sprinted across Seventy-
second Street, shouting: “Don’t move!
Stay right where you are . . . Keep your
head now. I’ll get you !”

Hansard stood up, teetered preca¬
riously on the foot-wide top of the sign.
He knew the traffic man, hollered :
"Never mind me, Allisjn. Watch below
there. Don’t let anybody in or out.”

“Got you, Mike.” The policeman bel¬
lowed gruff commands at the gathering
crowd.

IV/TIKE rested his elbows on the sill
above him, muscled himself up. He
hadn’t taken all of the window-pane with
him. He had to kick some of it out be¬
fore he could climb back into Lily’s
room.

The light was still on, his gun still on
the floor, over in the corner where Gor¬
illa George had kicked it. He picked it
up.

The fat woman stood in the doorway,
drywashing her hands and whining: “I
thought you said there wasn’t gonna be
any rough-house?”

Mike ignored it. “Where’d those two
punks go?”

“Those men who ran out into the hall
just now?”

Mike’s lips tightened. “Don’t stall.
Where are they?”

She pointed to the stairs. “They went
down. I didn’t know you were after
them. I couldn’t have stopped them,
anyway.”

“I’ll say you couldn’t. You know
’em!”

"Never saw either of them before to¬
night, in my life. Honest to God.”

Stewart Sterling

“All right,” he growled. “If you see
either of them again, and don’t report
it to the precinct, you’ll take a good
long vacation at the city’s expense. ” He
went up to third and top floor, made
sure there was no trap to the roof.

Allison yelled up to him : “Mike ! Jan¬
itor down here says a couple of mugs
beat it out back into Seventy-first,
through the basement, a minute ago.
One was a kind of ape-man with a scar
on his face. The other one just a real
sweet thing. They the ones?”

“That’s the pair.” Mike came down,
described Gorilla George and the Babe
in lurid detail. “Phone that dope in to
the dispatcher. Tell every man on duty
to pick up either one of those lugs on
sight.”

“They got guns, Mike?”

“They sure have. And they like to
use ’em on a man’s back. They’d have
used one on me, right away, except they
didn’t want to attract too much attention
here in a crowded district. The Babe
shot at me, as it was.”

“You look like you been in another
fracas, somewhere, Mike. Get chewed
up a little?”

Mike put his hand up to his cheek.
The cotton and collodion bandage was
still there. “Rather be chewed up than
boarded up, Allison. I still got my luck.
Never mind filing an accident report.
But after you finish with that alarm, you
might phone Homicide and tell ’em what
happened up here. Those punks must
have a hangout in town somewhere.
They know their way around too well to
be strangers. So maybe some stoolie can
help us out.”

He went back to Lily’s room, closed
the door. There was no doubt this was
the blonde’s “place of residence,” even
if she didn’t always sleep here. There
was another one of those letters in the
bureau drawer, in the same handwriting,
signed Mama, but very little else. On
the dresser was a pyroxylin toilet set in
flamboyant lavender-and-gilt.

Mike thoughtfully stuck the hairbrush
in his pocket, went out and locked the

door. He’d never seen a set just like
that one. The fact might be worth a
little nosing around.

He tossed the room key on the marble
table. The fat woman eyed him fearfully.

“Lily won’t be back,” Mike said, curt¬
ly. “She’s got a date with an undertaker.
Keep everybody out of this room until
an officer tells you different.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Kredit Korner Clue

HEN he went down
and climbed in his
car, it hurt him to sit
straight behind the
wheel. He found he
could get by if he
twisted sideways a
little. That rib would give the sawbones
a little something extra to play with
when he went to have his cheek dressed.

The part the girl had played in the
robbery and killing had been cleared up
a little. She had undoubtedly been a
pick-up, hooked into the crime without
knowing what it was all about. Prob¬
ably they’d given her the one ring as
her part of the payoff. But when Mac-
Ready had spotted them, been murdered
for his alertness, the girl got cold feet
and tried to run out.

That still didn’t clear up the main
problem. Who was behind this busi¬
ness? Neither the Babe or Gorilla
George were more than cheap choppers.
They wouldn’t be likely to have planned
this whole series of window jobs on their
own.

Mike stopped in at a bar opposite the
News Building and ordered rum — a
double Demerarra, straight. He felt bet¬
ter directly he’d downed it.

When he got down to Little Maiden
Lane, Brundage, the Ames Protection
Service guard, was inside the jewelry
store with a small, dapper, apple-cheeked
man in pince-nez who wore a. Vandyke
that looked as if it were made of old
manila rope.

Ten Carats of Lead

He bobbed his head to Hansard, held
out a neatly manicured hand and said:
“I am Ramon Dumont. You are from
headquarters, Lieutenant. . . ?”

“Yeah. Just Detective Hansard. Hel¬
lo, Amesy.”

“Hello.” Brundage stared. “Judas
Priest! They marked you up, didn’t
they? I heard about it from the harness
bull who took MacReady’s beat.”

“I’m still a hell of a lot better off than
Tom. You make out that missing prop¬
erty list, Mr. Dumont?”

“I have it here. The total amount is
near seven thousand. But of course the
thieves cannot realize any sum such as
that.”

“Don’t bet on it,” said Mike. “They
might have ways and means.” He put
the list in his pocket, took out the hair¬
brush. “You sell this?”

Dumont examined it. “No. It is not
an item we carry.”

The Ames man goggled. “Nobody’d
be fat-head enough to risk ten years in
the pen for a hunk of junk like that,
Hansard.”

“I didn’t think it was stolen, shamus.”
The detective tossed the brush on the
showcase. “But it belonged to the skirt
who was in on the robbery here. Fig¬
ured maybe she’d bought it down here,
used it as an excuse to case the store.”

The little jeweler laid a finger along¬
side his nose, cocked his head quizzical¬
ly. “As I say, it is not out of our stock.
But it is possible” — he dived under the
counter, disappeared from sight — “I
might, perhaps, be able to tell you who is
the manufacturer.”

“That might help,” Hansard agreed.

Dumont began to paw over illustrated
pages in a catalogue.

Brundage said in an undertone: “I
phoned a copy of the loot list to our Jer¬
sey office.”

“Can’t do any harm,” Mike said wear¬
ily. “Won’t do any good, either.”

“That’s what you Centre Street
wiseys think.” Brundage was nettled.
“The Newark cops just give out with
a stolen-car bulletin. Guess what car?”

“Don’t tell me,” Hansard said sar¬
castically, “it’s that green sedan you
saw ?”

“Exactly,” retorted Brundage. “And
from the way you described that lug
with the scar on his puss, I’d say he’s
one of the old Newark mob. A rat called
Chuck Scanlon.”

“You must be out of practice, Amesy.
You’re not calling your shots so good.
The crut who put the bump on that
blonde is named Gorilla George. I don’t
know if he comes from Newark or not,
but I’ve good reason to believe he’s still
in New York.”

“Well for Crysake.” Brundage glow¬
ered angrily. “How you expect us to
be any use on a job like this, if you keep
all the info to yourselves?”

“I don’t, fella. I don’t. This is a cop
case. A blue’s been knocked off. It’s
a personal matter with those of us who
knew MacReady, to get the guys who
dropped him, Brundage. That lets you
out.”

“In a pig’s whinny, it does. I been
assigned by my office to follow through
on this job. The insurance outfits are
beginning to raise hell with Ames. So
it’s a personal matter with us, too.”

The jeweler said excitedly: “Here it
is. I’ve found it. It is a new design.
The manufacturer is the Nik-Nak Nov¬
elty Company. They’re up in Attle¬
boro, Massachusetts.”

Mike said briskly : “ I hope they don’t
go to bed before ten o’clock up in Attle¬
boro.”

ME REACHED for

dialed headquarters.

when he got his part¬
ner’s extension, “we
might have a lead. Up
in the Marsh mouse’s furnished room,
I find a very gaudy piece of jewelry. A
toilet set. It was made by Nik-Nak
Novelty, up in Attleboro. According to
their new catalogue, it’s listed as Num¬
ber 27VO and is called Passionelle. Hot

Stewart Sterling

stuff, eh? Well, I figure maybe one of
the killers might have given it to her.
If so, it might help a lot to know where
he bought it. Or stole it. Get on to At-
telboro. I know it’s late, but get the
cops up there to locate somebody who
can tell you who bought sets like that,
around New York. And hustle, Eddie.
Hustle.”

Then he went to work on the loot list.

“Twenty-two solitaires, up to one and
a half carats,” he read. “Five bar-pins,
mostly mellees. One platinum brooch
with two rubies and six mellees. One
yellow-gold brooch with a small caboch-
on emerald and five genuine pearls. One
pair of diamond cuff-links, yellow-white
stones, gold lovers’-knot setting.” He
glanced up curiously at Dumont, who
was stroking his beard daintily. “Didn’t
look to me like there were that many
empty spots in the display.”

The jeweler shrugged. “I do not dress
the window myself, naturally. But here
is the clerk’s notation for the close of
business, last night.” He took a typed
sheet of paper from his pocket, unfolded
it on the showcase. “I have crossed off
the items which are still in the window.
Those which I have not checked are ob¬
viously missing. If there has been any
mistake it is obviously . . . ah . . . simply
an oversight.”

“You don’t say.” Hansard stuck the
display record in his pocket, along with
the list of stolen merchandise. “You
want to be a little careful about over¬
sights in a matter like this. Might get
someone to wondering if maybe you
don’t know more about the robbery than
you’re telling.”

Dumont was horrified. “But not at
all. The list I gave you is accurate, to
the best of my knowledge, I assure you.
I cannot permit you to make insinua¬
tions. . .

Brundage tapped on the showcase
with a scowl of importance. “The insur¬
ance companies will have to prosecute,
if you’re making a false claim, Mr. Du¬
mont. I’m warning you.”

“So!” The jeweler hissed, resentfully.

“You intend to intimidate me, to induce
me to present a less complete list of my
loses. Well” — his manila-rope beard
stuck out at right angles to his neck —
“you will not frighten Ramon Dumont.
No. Not one little bit — ”

The phone rang sharply. Mike got it.

“I caught the sales-manager in his of¬
fice, working late, Mike. He checked
his order book, and the Nik-Nak people
sold that particular number to twenty-
four jewelers in the metropolitan area.”

“We haven’t got time to fine-tooth
twenty-four stores, Ed. Look up their
cards. ”

“I already done it,” Schmidt an¬
nounced. “There’s only two of the twen¬
ty-four on our blue list.”

“Which two?”

“Salvatore Monterro, down on Nas¬
sau Street and that big outfit up in Har¬
lem. Nathan Kutwik.”

“Ah ! Maybe you got something there,
Eddie. Grab your hat. I’ll pick you up,
down front, in five minutes.”

TTE LEFT Brundage cross-question-
tioning the jeweler, ran his coupe up
to headquarters. Schmidt was waiting.
“Pile in, pal.”

“Holy cats, Mike. What smacked
you?”

“Glass out of Litzman’s window. I
want to do a little smacking back.”

“Can’t blame you for that.”

“They laid for me up at the blonde’s
hangout, too, Ed. Wanted to put me
out of the picture because they weren’t
sure how much the blonde had told me
before she died.”

“How much did she tell you?”

“Not one damn thing. But I dug the
Nik-Nak lead up in her room.”

“It smells like trouble, Mike.
Wouldn’t it be an idea to let the Homi¬
cide babies do the dirty work up in
Harlem?”

“A lousy idea. They’ll be on the Litz-
man end, anyhow. But this business is
right down our alley. We know this
Kutwik is a chiseling fence, or he
wouldn’t be on the suspected file. Maybe

Ten Carats of Lead

he’s been engineering all of these win¬
dow-hole jobs.”

“His place’ll probably be closed, this
hour.”

“Might. Might be open, too. They
do more business in Harlem around mid¬
night than they do in the daytime.”

HEN they rolled up in front of a
dazzling comer in the heart of
Harlem Mike got out of the coupe. The
luminous sign said — YOUR Kredit Is
Good at Kutwik’ s Komer.

“You can watch through the window,
from here, Eddie. Don’t let anybody
climb on my back.” Mike went inside.

There was only one man in the store,
a tall, powerfully built individual with
‘ expressionless gray eyes and skin the
color of tallow. “Something I can do
for you, sir?”

“Maybe. I’m a police officer. You’re
Nathan Kutwik?”

The big man’s eyes narrowed. “I
am.”

“Then you’ll know about a girl who
bought a dresser-set here a little while
ago.”

Kutwik pulled down the corners of
his mouth and rotated his head slowly,
from left to right. “I can’t be expected
to remember every person — ”

“You remember this blonde. Friend
of the Babe’s and Gorilla George.”

A pendulum clock on the wall ticked
off several seconds before Kutwik an¬
swered. “These persons you mention.

I can’t seem to recall — ”

Hansard shrugged. “Maybe they’re
the ones who’re lying, then. They claim
to know you, all right.”

“That’s quite possible.” The expres¬
sionless eyes stared insolently at Han¬
sard. “I have been here on this corner
for several years now.”

“Yeah. We been watching you for '
several years, too. You shouldn’t have
any trouble remembering these lads.
They say they been doing business with
you for quite some time.”

Kutwik picked up a cocktail shaker
made of ruby glass in the shape of a

barrel, ringed with silver hoops. "What
sort of business?”

“Stones. Their statement says they
just left a bunch of stuff with you.”
Mike was casual about it. As yet there
was no indication his bluff was working.
“I’m just waiting for the search warrant
to come over from the station.”

The proprietor of the Kredit Komer
waved a bloodless hand. “Help your¬
self. You don’t need a warrant in my
store. Go right ahead.”

The plainclothesman played his last
card. “If it was only some hot ice we
were after, I’d take you up on that. But
this is a homicide case, Kutwik.”

“Oh !” The jeweler set down the shak¬
er, softly. “Someone has been killed?”

“The girl I just told you about. And
a cop. You know how it is with the com¬
missioner. When a policeman’s been
murdered we put on plenty of pressure,
but we have to do everything strictly
legal, to be sure no pratt of a lawyer can
beat a conviction.”

Kutwik took out a silk handkerchief,
wiped his mouth. “This killing, now.
It was in connection with those dia¬
monds?”

"That’s right. And the party who’s
fencing them is going to be charged as
an accessory. It’s a chair-job for some¬
one. But of course, if you’re in the clear,
it won’t worry you.”

“Suppose” — the big man put both
palms on the top of the showcase, bent
over until his face was only a foot from
Hansard’s — “an honest business man
had been deceived about the ownership
of certain gems, and was quite unaware
of the manner in which they came into
the possession of certain parties attempt¬
ing to sell them — ”

“Go ahead. I’m supposing. . . .”

“Do you think the police would take
this fact into consideration, my friend?”

Hansard smiled tightly. “They might.
If the business man could help us to get
a conviction.”

Kutwik sighed. “I give you my word
of honor I knew nothing of this killing.
Naturally, under such circumstances, I

Stewart Sterling

would immediately have turned the
stones over to the authorities.”

“I bet you would,” said Hansard,
curtly. “Let’s see ’em.”

HE jeweler emerged
' from behind the coun-
ter, walked with a cu-
^ rious shambling gait

to the door of the
Kredit Korner, locked

_ Mike grinned to

himself. That would give Schmidt
something to fret about.

The big man came back, beckoned to
Hansard, led the way to a partition at
the rear of the store. On the way, the
detective gave the once-over to the big
steel safe which stood under an electric
light out where any passing policeman
could make sure it hadn’t been tampered
with. Evidently the jeweler didn’t trust
his privately purchased goods to its se¬
curity !

There was a tiny cubbyhole of an of¬
fice, a big glass-topped desk and a mod¬
ernistic lamp of varnished wood and
copper. Kutwik snapped on the light,
sat down in a padded chair.

“Let’s be open and above-board, my
friend.”

“Let’s,” Mike agreed.

“Perhaps there is ... um ... a re¬
ward for the arrest of these men you tell
me about.”

Mike stared. “Sure. Jewelers Asso¬
ciation reward. Twenty-five hundred
bucks or so, last time I heard. For evi¬
dence leading to conviction. Why?”

“As I understand it, you policemen
are not qualified for such a reward, if
you capture the criminals?”

“So which?”

Kutwik spread his palms, blandly.
“Possibly we could work out some ar¬
rangement. You and I, eh? I give you
the information, you see to it that I re¬
ceive the reward. Then we split — ”

Hansard shook his head in admira¬
tion. “You got your nerve. Putting a
program like that up to me. Why, you
putty-puss, you’ll be getting all the re¬

ward that’s coming to you if you miss
getting indicted for complicity in mur¬
der. Now cut out the horse and show me
the glitter.”

Kutwick sighed, pulled the lamp over
in front of him. “You cops are so stu¬
pid about money matters. Who will it
hurt, if you and I split that twenty-five
hundred?” There was no answer from
the hockshop cop, so the jeweler grasped
the base of the lamp in his left hand,
twisted the top with his right.

The lamp unscrewed, the top lifted off,
and there was a niche in the wooden base
about the size of a bird’s nest. There
were a lot of shiny eggs in it, round little
gold eggs with diamonds in them.

Hansard laid them out on the desk.
“All here but one,” he announced. “I
got that one in my pocket already.”

“They wanted three thousand dollars
for the lot,” Kutwik murmured, resent¬
fully. “Claimed they’d brought it over
from Naples and smuggled it in.”

“Don’t give me any of that guff.”
Hansard scooped up the jewelry,
dumped it in his coat pocket. “You knew
where it came from. Probably you
bought it, at that.”

“Oh, I deny it, absolutely. I asked
for time to make an appraisal.”

“Did, eh? Tell me why a crook
should trust you with five or six thou¬
sand dollars’ worth of rocks. Unless, of
course, they’d done business with you
before on the same basis.”

The fence arched his eyebrows, super¬
ciliously. “I am a reputable dealer. I
wouldn’t be likely to run away.”

“Not unless you could make a dollar
by doing it. All right. When were these
rats coming back for their cheese?”

“Tomorrow morning, officer,”

“Didn’t they leave any address, any
place you could get hold of them?”

Kutwik looked startled. “Why do you
ask me? You have them under arrest,
haven’t you?”

“I didn’t say so, mug. But Ill have
you in a cell in no time at all, unless you
answer my questions.”

The jeweler groaned. “They men-

Ten Carats of Lead

tioned a Nevins Street number. Over
in Brooklyn 24781, if I remember cor¬
rectly. But they were most particular
that I shouldn’t attempt to contact
them.”

Hansard wrote it down. “O.K., mis¬
ter. I’ll get over there and give a gan¬
der. You better close up shop now.”

“I’d intended to.”

“One more thing.” Mike reached for
the phone, dialed Spring 7-1000. When
he got the switchboard man, he rattled
off: “Hansard talking, hockshop squad
. . . I’m up at 9744 Lenox Avenue. Jew¬
elry store. Nathan Kutwik. Got that?
The phone is Edgecombe 7-0741. Put a
tap on the wire, right away, will you?
Want a record kept of all conversations,
numbers called, the works.”

He hung up with the operator’s com¬
ment still ringing in his ears. “What’s
the matter with you, Hansard? You
know we got to get a court order before
we do any wire-tapping.”

Mike started for the front door.

“Where you live, Kutwik?”

“At the Concourse Savoy. On the
Grand Concourse.”

“You better beat it right up there.
Stay there till I give you a ring.”

The jeweler unlocked the door. “You
won’t double-cross me, Mr. Hansard.
After my helping you, this way ?”

The detective clucked derisively.
“Tchk, tchk. You’re a guy should talk
about double-crossing! I’ll promise you
nothing except an even break. And you
won’t get that if you don’t keep your
nose clean from here on in.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Ten Carats of Lead

on motion

E WENT out,
swung briskly past
S ch m i d t, without
speaking. After he’d
gone halfway down
the block, he flailed
one arm in a come-
turning around. His

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Stewart Sterling

partner got it, slid the car up alongside.

“No dice, huh, Mike?”

“Plenty dice. I got the junk in my
pocket.”

“Ain’t you going to arrest Kutwik?”

“Not yet, Ed. I’m not sure he’s real¬
ly working with these choppers. But
we’ll find out. You stick here, at this
end of the block. I’ll drive around to the
other end. We tail him. If he comes
your way, I’ll see him and pick you up.
If he heads my way, you’re on your own.
You better check in with H.Q.”

Hansard dropped his partner, drove
on around the block. The lights at the
Kredit Korner were just going out as he
hit the end of the street. A minute later
the jeweler stepped out of the door. He
glanced cautiously up and down the
block, hurried toward Schmidt’s corner.
Mike followed with the car, keeping well
behind him.

Kutwik turned down Seventh Avenue.
By the time Mike saw Ed Schmidt, the
fence was nowhere in sight.

“That Yellow,” Schmidt snapped.
“Headin’ downtown. That’s him!”

Mike grunted. “He’s taking one hell
of a roundabout route to get to the Con¬
course, isn’t he?”

Through the northwest corner of Cen¬
tral Park, they trailed the taxi, to a short
crosstown block between Columbus and
Broadway. Mike stopped the coupe be¬
fore the taxi ceased moving. When Kut¬
wik got out of his cab and scanned the
street, there was no indication anyone
had been trailing him.

The jeweler paid off, hurried into a
three-story brownstone house.

Schmidt said : “That’s one of those
remodeled joints with a couple of apart¬
ments on each floor. How do we know
which one he’s in?”

“We don’t, Eddie. You stay here. Col¬
lar him if he comes out. If you get rough
about it, nobody could blame you. Cuff
him to the wheel and then hit the hall.
Wait there until you hear a racket, some¬
where. That’ll be me. If you don’t hear
a rumpus in a couple of minutes, make
one yourself and get some help.”

“How’ll you know where to head in,
Mike?”

“I’ll have to pull a Peeping Tom act.
Up the fire-escape, at the rear. If he’s
not in one of the rear flats I’ll go to the
roof and come down inside.”

“Don’t climb into some dame’s room
by mistake, pal.”

Mike told him to go to hell, got around
back past a row of ash-cans, using his
flash, found the iron ladder leading up
past the rear windows.

TYHERE were lights on all three
floors. The voices on the first floor
were female, those on the second, an old
man and a child.

But when Hansard put his ear to the
window on the top floor he heard Kut¬
wik say: “I don’t want any part of it,
Babe. I don’t mind running a few legiti¬
mate risks. But this hot-squat sturff is
too much for me.”

The high-pitched voice of the Babe

cut in. “You soft-bellied - ! What

do you think you can do about it now?”

“All I want is my money back. I’ll
give you the stuff. You can get rid of
it outside the state.”

The Babe cursed him obscenely. “You
got as much chance of getting back that
grand as you have of staying in the clear
if George or I get picked up, Nate. The
junk was worth three thousand, any way
you wanted to figure it. You chiseled us
down to one and now you want to welsh
on that.”

“All right.” Kutwik sounded tired.
“Forget the cash. Come up tomorrow
and take the junk back. I don’t want it.
It’s too hot for me. I’d rather take the
loss and throw the stuff down the
sewer.”

“Why didn’t you bring it with you
tonight, if you’re so damn anxious to
get rid of it?”

The jeweler said: “I don’t want to
touch it again. Much less carry it around
where they could frisk it off me. You
come up in the morning and get it. If
you don’t, I’ll heave it in the river. I’m
telling you.”

Ten Carats of Lead

TI/TIKE squatted on the fire-escape and
grinned sourly as he patted the
bulge in his pocket where the rings were.
The old buzzard was still after that re¬
ward, figured that by getting Babe and
the Gorilla to return to the Kredit Kor-
ner in the morning, he’d square himself
with the authorities and be able to claim
at least a part of the twenty-five hun¬
dred. He wouldn’t miss the thousand
bucks he’d paid over to the Babe so
much, then.

There was no more talking from with¬
in. Somewhere in the apartment a door
slammed. Mike got out his jack-knife,
went to work on the catch of the win¬
dow. It was a gamble, busting into a
crook’s flat this way. But it would be
even more of a gamble if he and Eddie
tried to crash the front door. And may¬
be this rear window wasn’t being
watched.

It wasn’t. He slipped the catch with
the blade, put his fingers on the pane,
pushed up gently. The window came up
with no noise. He got out his gun,
shoved the shade aside, stepped quietly
over the sill. Then he closed the window
softly. The Babe might notice a draft
from an unaccustomed source.

The room he was in looked like a bou¬
doir. Rose-pink spread on the bed, fluffy
drapes at the windows, a dressing-table
with a vanity mirror. But no women’s
clothes . . .

He stepped to the door leading into
the hall. There was a rattling of ice in
a glass, the sound of a syphon. Mike
moved out into the hall.

The Babe, in a pair of vivid blue
lounging-pajamas, was mixing a drink.
He was lifting it to his lips when Mike
said: “Hang onto it, sweetheart. With
both hands. Get both hands on that
< jlass , fast!”

The Babe did as he was told, watching
Hansard with sullen eyes.

Mike stepped close to him, jabbed him
gently with the muzzle of his pistol.
“Turn around, Babe. Up against the
wall there.” He got the bracelets out of
his hip-pocket, clipped one half of the

nickeled cuffs to the killer’s left wrist.

There was a buzz out in the front of
the apartment, another and another.

“That will be Georgie the ape-man,
huh?”

Mike snapped the other half of the
handcuffs around a steam riser in the
corner of the kitchen. “You stay here,
beautiful. I’ll go let him in. And if you
yell or anything like that, I’ll put a dent
in that classic nose of yours.”

Hansard went through the hall, past a
daintily furnished living-room, to the
front door. There was the sound of a
key in the lock. Mike didn’t wait. He
jerked the door open.

Gorilla George fell into the room, his
jaw gaping in astonishment. Hansard
had his share of the same feeling. For
behind the Gorilla, a look of grim deter¬
mination on his red face and an automa¬
tic clutched in his fist, was Brundage,
the Ames patrolman !

Things happened fast. The Gorilla let
the momentum of his plunging entrance
carry him into a dive for Mike’s knees.
Hansard chopped down with the barrel
of his revolver, caught the ape-man be¬
side the ear with force enough to crack
the skull of an ordinary individual.

But the Gorilla didn’t stop. He got
those long arms around Hansard’s
knees, threw him heavily.

From the kitchen came a cry.
“George. He’s got me cuffed here!”
The words spurred the scar-lipped man
to a frenzy. Mike shot him once, through
the shoulder, but George smashed a
clubbed fist to the plainclothesman’s jaw,
wrenching his head to one side and send¬
ing a spasm of pain through him from
the cracked rib.

Then Brundage took two quick steps,
put the muzzle of his automatic in the
Gorilla’s right ear, pulled the trigger.
The body collapsed on top of Hansard.

“Crysake, Brundage,” Mike mut¬
tered. “You didn’t have to do that.”

The Ames man blew the smoke out of
his pistol barrel. “He’d have killed you,
wise guy. He was heading upstairs to
do just that, when I ran into him.”

Stewart Sterling

Mike got painfully to his feet. “Didn’t
you run into my partner, too? I left
!iim down there, on guard.”

“Sure.” Brundage turned the Gorilla
over with his toe. “But he wanted to
phone for some more of you John Laws,
so I told him to go ahead. Then when
I got in the building, I’m trying to find
which apartment belongs to this Babe
Tyler, who used to buddy around with
Dumont, an’ who should come along but
this rat ? So I bring him up with me.”

“George!” screamed the Babe, from
the kitchen. “Where did he hit you,

George ? If that - got you. I’ll burn

bis eyes out!”

Mike nodded toward the kitchen.
“Georgie’s boy-friend, or something.
The one who drilled Tom MacReady.”

Brundage stuck out his jaw bellige¬
rently. “I’d like a crack at that punk.
I’ll run him over to the precinct house
for you. You ain’t in no shape to man¬
handle him, fella.” t

Hansard said: “I’ll be O.' K. Bent a
rib last time I had an argument with
these two. But you can help me with
him, unless you’ve got ideas about col¬
lecting any part of that Jeweler’s Asso¬
ciation reward?”

The Ames man shook his head. “I
ain’t eligible. All I’m doin’ is tryin’ to
protect my job. That’s why I hammered
Dumont until I dragged the Babe’s ad¬
dress outa him. Gimme the cuff-keys.
I got a couple of new grips I want to
show that scut.”

Hansard took a key from his vest
pocket, tossed it to him. “Don’t bang
him around too much. Prosecutor’ll give
us trouble, if you do.”

Brundage went into the kitchen.

Mike waited until the private patrol¬
man was out of sight, then followed on
tiptoe. He peeked around the corner.

Brundage was having trouble with the
lock on the handcuffs.

“Hurry up,” whispered the Babe.
“And give me a gun.”

“Left-hand pocket,” muttered the
Ames representative. “This key don’t
fit.”

“Damn right it don’t,” Mike snapped.
“You don’t think I was sap enough to
fall for that line of horse, do you?”

Brundage snarled, fired. But his aim
was spoiled by the Babe, who was des¬
perately trying to tug the extra pistol
from Brundage’s pocket.

IKE took his time,
steadied himself
against the door jamb,
j shot Brundage in the
navel. He had to put
\ another slug in the
. same place before the
private cop sank to the floor and dropped
his gun.

The Babe had managed to get the
automatic from Brundage’s coat before
the Ames man fell. He lifted it, sighted.

Hansard came in fast, knocked the
muzzle aside, clipped the Babe once
across the teeth with the barrel of his
own .38.

The killer moaned and sagged limply
against the chain of the handcuffs.

Brundage rolled over on his side.
“They’ll get you for this, copper. My
people’ll get you.”

“Sure they will, Amesy.” Mike ran
water in the sink, put his head under it,
said sputteringly : “They’ll get me to
accept a medal for turning up a traitor.
As well as a guy who’s wanted by the
Frisco police.”

“You’re crazy. Ain’t . . . first time
. . . cop’s gone . . .gun-crazy.” Brun¬
dage put a hand to his belly. Somehow
the gesture reminded Mike of Tom Mac-
Ready on the operating carriage.

“No.” Mike wiped his face on a dish
towel. “I might have been a little dumb.
But not wacky. I had sense enough to
figure out that the louse behind all these
window-hole robberies must be some¬
body who knew a lot about the kind of
stuff in jewelry-store windows and when
the Ames men wouldn’t be around and
what time the harness bulls would be on
a different part of their beats. A guy
like Dumont wouldn’t know all those
angles. He wouldn’t be able to find out,

Ten Carats of Lead

either. And naturally, a couple of tor¬
pedoes like the Gorilla and the Babe here
wouldn’t have that information. But you
would. And working with Kutwik, you’d
gotten away with it for a long time.
Using a different mob of killers every so
often and knocking them off yourself,
when you were through with them, I
suppose.”

The Babe whimpered : “George. You
shot George?”

“Not me,” Mike said. “I would have,
only your boss beat me to the punch.”

The youth in the pajamas reached
over, clawed savagely at Brundage’s
face. Mike bent down, clipped him.

“Mike! Where are you, Mike?” It
was Schmidt’s worried voice, calling
from the front door.

“In the kitchen,” Hansard shouted.

Schmidt came running in. “Holy
cow!” he breathed as he saw the two
men on the floor in the corner. “Good
thing I sent for an ambulance, huh?”

"What’d you do that for, Ed?”

“That jeweler, Kutwik. I went away
from the car and left that Ames gent to
watch him. When I come back, the
Ames lad is gone and Kutwik has a hole
as big as your thumb, in his chest.”

“I hope he’ll live,” Mike growled, “to
testify against this crooked private cop.
His name isn’t Brundage, of course. It’s
Sexton. But it won’t make much differ¬
ence. The Babe will go to town on the
stand. Brundage, or Sexton, bumped
the Babe’s boy-friend.”

“Jeeze, Mike! What a shambles!
Which one shot the blonde?”

“The Babe, there. On Brundage’s or¬
ders, no doubt. The girl got panicky
when Tom was shot and tried to skip.
They had to blot her out or the game
was up.” He went over to the half -con¬
scious youth, ran his fingers through the
marcelled hair. “Know what I was won¬
dering, Eddie?”

“What, Mike?”

“How this baby will look with his
head shaved.”

ON THE NEXT PACE-

AND

It Isn't often an editor can tell an artist to go ahead and make as many errors In htB Illustrations
as he wants. But that’s what happened when we asked I. B. Hazelton to do the pictures on the
neat two pages. And how he followed the suggestion. The pictorial story of the famous Fall
River murder case Is a hophead’s dream of mistakes, flaws, wholesale violation of fact — and all
you have to do Is drop us a line telling us what’s wrong with these pictures — oh, yes, the cap¬
tions that form the text are full of error, too — accompanying your answers with a not-more-than
twenty-five (25) word criticism of BLACK MASK. The reader who writes in giving the most
complete list of all the errors Mr. Hazelton has made In telling of this crime, and makes the most
constructive criticisms and suggestions on how BLACK MASK may be improved, will receive a
check for $5.00 and the next five winners will be presented with a year’s subscription to BLACK
MASK. In the event of ties, duplicate prizes will be awarded.

Bi^iSasK

All answers should be addressed to THE FAMOUS CRIMES CONTEST EDITOR, BLACK MASK
MAGAZINE, 210 E. 43 ST., NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK. No letters will be returned nor
can we enter Into correspondence regarding them. Answers to the contest In this Issue must
be in this office before noon, JULY 1st. Winners of this contest will he announced In the OCTO¬
BER Issue of the magazine.

Wuats Wrong With

THE BORDEN MURDERS

blazing hot day. Lizzie was
immediately suspected of
the crime as she was known
to have purchased shotgun
shells the day before (6)
from the local hardware.
However, a strange man (1)
carrying a shotgun was seen
by neighbors to rush from

This Famous Crime ?

IM FALL RIVER

an accomplice. Lizzie, who
swore that she was slightly be¬
fuddled from drinking too
much port wine, claimed she
had been out in the back yard

swore she had been ironing (4)
up to the time in question. When
her father was discovered dead
in his armchair, her mother on
the floor of the cellar, Lizzie
fainted from shock. She was con¬
victed, despite protestations of
innocence but later pardoned by
the governor of the state after
serving six years of a 20-year sen¬
tence.

gathering and eating
chestnuts (3) at crime¬
time and after that (5)
went to the barn hunt¬
ing for feathers for
her arrows as she was
an ardent archer. She

See Page 49 for an¬
nouncement and ex¬
planation of the above.
NEXT MONTH — New
York’s Knickerbocker
Athletic Club Murder
Case.

CASEY AND THE
BLOND WREN

GEORGE HARMON COXE

LASHGUN CASEY
was bored. For the past
twenty minutes, while the
Ruthania’s gangplanks
were being lowered, he
had trailed McCall, the
ship-news man, in the
hope of getting a worthwhile picture or

The man behind the
gun said: “Drop it
lady!”

There were two kinds of people that got the goat of the
number-one photographer on the Express — the camera-crazy
and the camera-shy. The blond little British wren was the latter —
lens-leery though lovely, and she had a reason. A lead reason calibered
to fit a blue-steel argument that couldn’t be refuted by words alone.
52

Casey and the Blond Wren

two. Instead, he had found the shipload
of passengers singularly nondescript,
with not even an actress or chorus girl
to give him the opportunity to snap some
leg art and break the routine.

And then, as the ship emptied and
they were about to leave, he saw the man
with the cane step out of a passageway
and hesitate a moment, surveying the
nearly deserted deck with cold, steady
eyes.

In spite of the noticeable limp he stood
very straight, his heavy ulster square
across the thin shoulders, the lines in his
lean face tight and deep. Gray, austere,
and no longer young, there was some¬
thing very British about him even before
he spoke.

“Sorry,” he said coldly, as McCall
stepped up and identified himself. He
took a step as if to pass, then he saw
Casey lift his camera. With that he
turned on his cane and stepped back into
the passageway.

“Hmm,” breathed McCall. “Touchy."

Casey grinned, no longer bored.

There were, in his life, only two kinds
of people who gave him trouble — profes¬
sionally, that is. One was the publicity
crazy lens lice who went everywhere just
to get their pictures taken with people of
some importance, and who frequently
were circumvented only by wasting a
flashbulb and forgetting to pull out the
plateholder slide. The other class was
made up of Morgans and Toscaninis
who, for some reason or other, hated
photographers and refused to pose.

Because the man with the cane was
one of these, Casey was interested. Not
that the picture would be printed neces¬
sarily, at least until he knew who his
quarry was, but Casey liked a challenge.
That’s why he was number-one camera
for the Express.

“Come on,” he grunted, the grin still
splitting his broad solid face as he
started down the gangplank. “I’ll get
him on the pier.”

He found a place beside a concrete
pillar just inside the customs shed, and
while he waited he adjusted his shutter

and focus and made sure the flashbulb
was screwed in. When McCall nodded
he moved a half-step around the column,
taking a quick glance toward the gang¬
plank as he did so. Right then he real¬
ized that there was someone else aboard
the Ruthania who was worth a picture.

CHE came down the gangplank a half-
^ dozen steps behind the man with the
cane, a slim, blond girl, tall and aristo¬
cratic-looking in her tailored tweed suit,
one hand on the railing and poise in
every movement.

Casey saw this much before the man
with the cane stepped from the shelter of
the canopied gangplank, limped across
the pier and into the shed. When he
stopped to orient himself, Casey stepped
out in the open and snapped the shutter.

It was practically a full-face shot, and
as the bulb exploded light in the shed,
Casey noticed that in spite of the crowd
milling about the concrete floor there
were but three people in the range of his
finder — his man, the girl, who was now
but a step or two to one side, and a
squat, dark fellow with thick-lensed
glasses, who leaned idly against another
pillar a few feet in the background.

Casey heard the clipped English ac¬
cent of the man with the cane, his pro¬
testing, “Here! I say now — ” and then
he moved past, ignoring his sputtering
victim for a last look at the girl.

Her reaction puzzled him. He had
noticed the look of startled surprise as he
lowered his camera, and now her smooth
young face held an expression that
seemed like consternation, or alarm. He
was still wondering where she had been
hiding and who she was when he came
to the customs gate.

Tom Wade greeted him with a grin as
he and McCall passed the uniformed of¬
ficial and Casey said: “You going back
to the office?”

A curly-headed youth with a round,
goodnatured face, Wade had ridden
down with Casey and McCall, his pock¬
ets bulging with plateholders, to cover
an assignment on nearby Fish Pier, and

George Harmon Coxe

had agreed to wait for them if he finished
first.

“Sure,” he said. “Aren’t you?”

“I got a call from Jake Cohen,” Casey
explained. “He says he’s got a good buy
in a second-hand six-inch lens. It’s al¬
most five now and if I don’t step on it
he’ll be closed.” He shoved his exposed
plateholders at Wade. “Take ’em back
for me, will you?”

«HEN Casey came in¬
to the studio ante¬
room on the third
floor of the Express
Building, Egan was
holding up a Racing
Form in front of his
face, but he wasn’t picking a horse, he
was looking covertly over the top of
the paper and eyeing the girl with frank
admiration. She sat on a rickety chair
near the door, her knees crossed and
back straight. Her head came round as
Casey stopped in the doorway. Her
glance met his and held it.

Egan rattled the Racing Form and
stood up. “She” — he nodded to indi¬
cate the girl and winked — “she’s been
waiting for you. Flash.”

“It’s about that picture.”

She was on her feet now, a certain
breathlessness in her manner, and Casey
knew then that the impressions he had
formed so quickly down at the customs
shed were correct, but not complete. Her
slenderness was softly curving in spite of
the tailored suit. She was tall, and
young, not more than twenty-two or
-three. But until now he had not known
that her eyes were clear gray — nor about
the satin smoothness of her skin nor the
texture of her straw-colored hair. She
was not really pretty, her face was too
thin and too severe, but Casey had the
photographer’s eye for line and he knew
the bone structure was good and that she
would grow beautiful with the years.

“The one you took at the customs
shed,” she added quickly when he did
not speak.

Casey stalled, amusement in the back

of his eyes and his face blank. “Did I
take a picture of you?” he asked doubt¬
fully. “I don’t seem to remember — ”

“It wasn’t of me exactly. It was a
man with a cane, really, but I know I
was in it and — well, I wondered — ” She
broke off and began again, with the
charm turned on. “Could I have that
picture, please?”

“Why?” he asked goodnaturedly, dis¬
counting the charm because he had faced
such requests so often.

That stopped her for a second or two.
Then she was speaking in a low, mod¬
ulated voice that was soft with an accent
that could have come only from London
— or the stage.

“I’m not supposed to be here,” she
said. “That is — ” She broke off again
and lines moved in her face and he saw
that she was smiling. He didn’t believe
the smile. It came only after an effort
and was a studied, shallow thing that did
not go with the eyes.

“As a matter of fact,” she went on, “I
came over here to be married. I was
supposed to leave Southampton today
but I found I could get a cabin on the
Ruthania and took it, and well, I’ll have
a week or more, you see, before I’m real¬
ly due here.”

The grin that was in the back of
Casey’s eyes fled to leave them dark and
probing and skeptical. “Oh,” he said.

"Yes. It’s just” — the smile faded and
she lowered her glance — "one of those
silly ideas one has. I’d like to have my
week to myself and be by myself and do
as I please. Not that I don’t love Paul.
It’s only that I’d like to have this time
as my own, and if the picture was
printed in the paper it would be fright¬
fully awkward.”

There was a little more of this, all of
it leaving Casey strangely unconvinced.
He didn’t know why. The words were
not unreasonable and the eagerness to
impress was unmistakable. But the mel¬
ody was a little off key and presently
he looked past her at Egan.

"Wade been in?”

Egan shook his head and Casey leaned

Casey and the Blond Wren

over his desk, picked up the telephone
and asked for McCall. “Wade come back
with you?” he asked, and when McCall
told him Wade had stopped on Washing¬
ton Street for a beer, Casey added, “Oh,
he did, huh?” and replaced the instru¬
ment thoughtfully.

Cohen’s pawnshop had been closed
when he arrived and as a result he had
come directly back to the Express.
Wade, apparently, was taking plenty of
time over the beer.

“You’d better leave your name and
address,” he told the girl.

“Allison.” She hesitated, gray eyes
doubtful. “Nancy Allison.”

“Where can I reach you?”

“At the Clark Hotel.”

“All right,” Casey said, “I’ll let you
know.” He saw the quick concern in
her glance and met it with steady specu¬
lation, knowing now that he would not
have given her the picture if he’d had it
— not until he was satisfied as to the real
reason which prompted this routine.
Since he had a good excuse, he used it,
explaining how he had given his plates
to Wade.

“So I haven’t got yours,” he said, “be¬
cause Wade hasn’t come back.”

The gray eyes clouded and Nancy Al¬
lison’s, “Oh,” was keenly disappointed.
“Then—”

“I’ll let you know,” Casey said again,
and left it that way, so that the girl had
no alternative but to leave.

“Nice,” said Egan approvingly when

she had gone. “You’ll let her know, huh?
At her hotel. My-my.”

Casey growled absently, stood for a
moment with thick brows bent in
thought. Then he went upstairs to the
city-room, dark eyes narrowed by the
puzzles in his brain.

McCall was tapping out a story at his
desk. “Wade get back?” he asked, not
looking up.

“No.” Casey hesitated, continued
bluntly. “Did you check up on that guy
with the cane ? The one that didn’t want
to be interviewed?”

McCall stopped typing, nodded, picked
up a slip of paper from his desk. “Name
of Banning, ” he said. “George Banning.
Came in on an English visa. That’s
about all the purser knew about him.”

“Travel alone?”

“Yep. Single stateroom with private
bath.” McCall glanced up, one brow
cocking. “Why? You got something?”

Casey shook his head, his brow fur¬
rowed. “Not a thing. Not even my pic¬
ture — yet.”

SASEY found Wade as
he came along the nar¬
row alley from the
jBparking space in back of
Suhe Express Building
flSon his way back from
^dinner. Night was clos¬
ing in fast over the city and here in the
canyon between the grimy brick walls
it was already dark so that Casey did

George Harmon Coxe

not see what tripped him but only felt
the limp form under his foot as he stum¬
bled to one knee.

He struck a match. The flame flared
briefly and the walls withdrew and a
yellow glow bathed a round smooth face
that was white and still. The hat had.
rolled aside, disclosing a matted patch in
the curly hair behind the ear. A cobble¬
stone was stained with dark red spots.
The wind, cold and raw as it drove in
from the ocean swirled down and eddied
along the alley floor.

The match went out and Casey was
suddenly cold with an inner chill that
put stiffness into his muscles. He knelt
that way for seconds, incredulous, while
the dust swirled about his ankles. Then,
with a savage grunt, he lifted Tom Wade
in his arms and hurried for the lighted
sidewalk ahead.

A group of pressmen coming in from
supper drew back as he passed through
the narrow foyer. They followed him
into the classified room, huddling about
and muttering as Casey put Wade on
the settee by the windows.

“A doctor!” Casey ordered of the
single clerk behind the counter, and the -
clerk had the good sense to reach for
the telephone before asking questions.

When they found out that Casey had
nothing to tell, the pressmen fell silent,
watching him feel for a pulse beat and
make a pillow of his coat. Suddenly he
rose, and they moved out of his way.

He found Wade’s platecase in the alley
close to his hat. He brought it inside and
opened it. When he saw that all of the
plateholders were missing, the muscles
in his face got hard and anger made his
dark eyes hot and bright.

The doctor was noncommittal, calling
for an ambulance after his first quick in¬
spection. “He’ll probably be all right,”
he said finally, “but we’ll have to put him
under observation until we know.”

A burly truck driver had been sta¬
tioned at the door and only those who
had some good reason to be there were
in the room. Among them were Blaine,
the city editor, and McCalL Blaine, with

his lean, unsmiling face and prematurely
gray hair and cold gray eyes, Blaine the
disciplinarian who accepted sentiment
only in a human interest story, who re¬
fused excuses and was the best desk man
in the city. The moment he spoke, Casey
knew that McCall had told him too
much.

“Who would want to slug him?”
Blaine asked curtly. And when Casey
said he didn’t know, “Why didn’t you
bring your own plates in?”

Casey told him, just as curtly and with
more feeling.

“He had an assignment of his own,
you know,” Blaine said. “If he’d come
back with McCall — ”

“You’d have had your plates, wouldn’t
you?” Casey finished resentfully.

Blaine glared at him and spoke to the
doctor. “See that he has the best,” he
said, and left the room.

CASEY stood beside the settee, a
burly man with a broad rugged face
and thick brown hair peppered with
gray at the sides and shaggy at the nape.
The ruggedness of his face stood out
now because the set muscles made grim
bunches at the hinge of his jaw. The
look in his dark eyes was unpleasant to
see, and his voice had a vicious edge.

“What’d they hit him with?” he
asked.

The doctor closed his bag. “Something
with a hard edge. ”

Casey looked down at the still figure
and then, suddenly, he saw that Wade’s
eyes were open — vacant, pain-ridden
eyes until they focused on Casey. The
smile came, weakly but definite.

“You must’ve had something special,
Flash. What was it?”

“I don’t know, kid.” Casey made his
voice hearty, though his throat was thick
from the smile. “But we’ll damn well
find out.”

“I tried to give them an argument.”
Wade’s eyes closed again and his voice
trailed off. “They played kind of rough,
pal.”

Casey’s hand closed on the arm of the

Casey and the Blond Wren

settee, twisting with white knuckles until
the dry wood cracked. “Five foot six
and a hundred and thirty pounds,” he
muttered, speaking to no one. “They
didn’t have to slug him.”

He rode in the ambulance with Wade,
hoping that there would be another con¬
scious spell in which he could learn
something about the “they” who had
done this. When, after the youth had
been put to bed, he found there was
nothing he could do, he went back to the
office. There he found waiting for him
a chubby individual with a taxi-driver’s
shield pinned to his cap. He had, he said,
heard about Wade.

“And I been thinking about it. Flash,”
he said. “Maybe I picked up the guys
that put the slug on him. I’m parked
down by the corner, see ? And two par¬
ties come out of the alley. Just about
the right time, too.”

“What did they look like?”

“Well” — the driver rubbed the stub¬
ble on his chin — “just ordinary-looking
guys, sort of. One was thin and kinda
tallish and the other was maybe a couple
of inches shorter and heavier — a good-
looking guy.”

Casey’s grunt was derisive. “That’s
a big help, Hoxie. Just two guys named
Joe, huh? Hell, didn!t you see any¬
thing?”

“I don’t know anything then, do I?”
Hoxie said defensively. “They want a
ride and they climb in.”

“Where’d they go?”

“They went — wait a minute. I did
notice one thing. The thin guy had a
scar across the corner of his mouth.”

“Where’d they go?” Casey pressed.

“Down to the corner of Stuart. I had
to park while one of ’em made a phone
call. When he came back he said he had
to go to the Bradwyne Hotel, and that
the other guy was to go back to Rad¬
nor’s. So I took him there.”

“Radnor’s?”

“An antique joint just off Boylston.”

“And the Bradwyne,” Casey said
thoughtfully, dark eyes narrowing, “is
right across from the Clark.”

A POLICE car was
parked a short dis¬
tance beyond the mar¬
quee of the Bradwyne
and Casey, bent on
having words with the
house detective, spot¬
ted it as he turned in.

The chauffeur, in plain clothes, said,
“Hello, Flash,” and answered Casey’s
question as to why he was waiting here
matter-of-factly. “Somebody got shot.”
“Who’s handling it?”

“Logan.”

Casey strode into the lobby, folding a
bill in his palm so the 5 on it showed
as he came up to the bell captain.

“Twelve-five-o,” said the captain cup¬
ping his hand.

Casey rode up and turned down the
twelfth-floor corridor. There was a man
at the far end. He turned out to be a
burly plainclothesman and he was lean¬
ing against the pastel-gray casing that
framed the door of room 1250.

“Hi, Lafferty,” greeted Casey.
“What do you want?” said Lafferty,
scowling suspiciously.

Casey was already reaching for the
doorknob and he nearly broke his wrist
when the plainclothesman blocked him.
“You can’t go in there,” he stated flatly.

Casey looked surprised and hurt. “But
the lieutenant sent for me. ”

“Yah—”

“O. K.” Casey shrugged. “It’s up to
you. I’ll have to tell him you wouldn’t
let me in.”

It was a good act and Lafferty wav¬
ered. “Yeah?” he said doubtfully. “You
wouldn’t try to kid me, would you, Flash¬
gun?”

Casey remained silent but continued to
look hurt, and with a reluctant stare at
the big photographer Lafferty turned
and opened the door, intent on sticking
his neck into the room and asking his
question.

The instant the door moved Casey
pushed forward. Lafferty strangled on
a curse and arched his back, but Casey
had a little momentum, and he was just

George Harmon Coxe

as big as Lafferty. In the end the plain-
clothesman had to let go of the doorknob
or lose his arm. He let go and the two
of them stumbled across the threshold
with Lafferty running interference.

Four men stood in the room. A fifth
was stretched on the floor, a still slender
figure with gray hair and mustache and a
thin, lined face. There was a dark stain
on his waistcoat and nearby lay a gun —
and a cane.

Startled by the entrance the quartet
stared at Casey. Warbeck, the house
detective, began to grin and so did the
plainclothesman and the fingerprint man
and photographer. Lieutenant Logan
just bent an eye at Lafferty, and stared
sourly.

“I shoulda known,” choked Lafferty,
face purple and breath coming hard. “He
said you sent for him. I shoulda — ”

“You can’t come in here, Flash,” Lo¬
gan said wearily, ignoring Lafferty.
“Not till the M. E.’s been here. You
know that. Go on, now, shove off.”

“If you say so,” Casey answered in
mock regret, “but I thought you’d want
to know some things about him.” He
nodded at the still figure on the floor.

“And you can tell us?”

“I took a picture of him this after¬
noon. Name’s Banning, isn’t it?”

He catalogued the condition of the
room — the overturned chair and table,
the broken lamp — as he spoke, and with¬
out waiting for Logan to voice his sur¬
prise, Casey told him what he knew,
his voice flat and direct until he began
to speak of what had happened to Wade.
Then his tone took on an edge, and his
eyes got sultry.

“You think there’s a hook-up between
the two that jumped Wade and this?”
Logan asked when the story was fin¬
ished.

“I thought there might be,” Casey
said. And, after a pause, “Know any¬
thing about him?”

“Not much.” Logan rubbed his chin
and pushed out his lips. “He was shot
twice with that Webly at close range,
and his name on the register downstairs

is Banning, all right. But — things we
found on him say he’s Eric Kirkman,
and he’s got some tie-up with the British
navy. It could be phony. We’re trying
to get in touch with the British consul.

“We may get a line when we find the
woman.”

“What woman?”

Casey’s lids came down and he waited.

“She came up here somewhere around
the time that a fellow across the hall
heard what sounded like shots. And it
just happened that the same elevator boy
took her down. She was up here four
or five minutes and she was like a ghost
— so the boy says — when she rode down.
Had to speak to her three times when
the car stopped in the lobby before she
got out.”

“ Hmm Casey said, still waiting with
nerves a little tight.

“We’ve got a pretty good description
of her,” Logan went on. “Slender, blond,
young, brown tweed suit and English
accent. If she took a cab we might nail
her.”

““SHE door opened at Ca¬
sey’s second knock. She
V had her hat and coat on
If and a handbag under
v her arm. She stiffened
and paled when she saw
him and for that first
second or two her jaw sagged and many
things battled it out in the depths of her
gray eyes. In the end a mantle of distant
politeness settled- over her.

“Oh,” she said. “You — come in,
please. You” — she hovered over him
when she closed the door — “you have
the picture?”

Casey looked right at her, not speak¬
ing until he saw her forces crumble and
the -color start to ooze from her cheeks.

“No,” he said, watching the fear come
into her eyes. “I thought maybe you
had those plates,” he added, and went
on in clipped hard sentences to tell about
Tom Wade.

She heard him out, the whiteness com¬
ing about her jaw. “But that’s ridicu-

Casey and the Blond Wren

lous,” she said finally. “Why should I
have come and asked for the picture
if — ”

“Because,” said Casey, “when you
asked you thought I had already deliv¬
ered the plates to the office and there
was no other way of getting the one you
wanted. That’s why you gave me your
right name and address. Afterward,
when you learned that Wade had the
plate, and had not yet returned, it made
things much simpler.”

He went on with his theory, guessing,
bluffing, filling in gaps. “Wade wasn’t
very big,” he said in the end. “And
there were two of them. Are they the
ones that shot the Englishman — or was
that your job?”

She caught her breath, the recoil of
her nerves a visible thing. He waited
for her to speak, then tried again.

“You followed him off the boat. You
were in that picture with him.”

She stood perfectly still, nothing
changing in her face, and his dark eyes
got morose. Abruptly, with a shrug and
a half-audible grunt, he stepped to the
telephone and picked it up. “Hello,” he
said, and then her voice rose up behind
him sharp and jerky, and something
thudded softly to the floor.

“Put that down!”

Her very tone checked him, and when
he glanced over his shoulder he saw the
little automatic in her hand. On the floor
near her feet was the open handbag.

Casey put down the instrument, his
lips forming a tight little smile as he
faced her. The gun was steady in her
hand, and she was backing toward the
door, her handbag forgotten. He stood
watching her slow backward progress
until, reaching behind her, she found the
knob.

“Look,” he said, his voice no longer
hard, “why don’t you tell me about it?
You’re using a gun to run out, but what
will it get you? The minute you shut
the door I’ll call the desk. They’ll grab
you before you can get out.”

That did it. The reasonableness of his
statement penetrated the defensive shell

she had built up and she had nothing left
with which to fight. With a sob she
dropped her arm and leaned back against
the door while tears welled in her eyes.

Two long steps took Casey to her side.
He put his hand under her arm and led
her gently to a chair. Then, to give her
time to gather her composure, he busied
himself with other things. He shut the
door, which had swung open. He picked
up the handbag. He took the automatic
from her limp fingers and put it inside.
Then he swiveled a chair from the desk
and sat down, straddling it as he faced
her.

“I’m sorry,” she said huskily. "And
— and thank you for stopping me.”

“You were there, weren’t you?” he
said gently. “He was dead when you
found him.”

“Yes.”

“Who was he?”

“Sir Eric Kirkman.”

“And he was in the British navy?”

“He was a captain — retired.”

“You came over with him. You came
to ask me for the picture on his account,
not on your own. Why?” He offered
her a cigarette as he spoke, and after
a slight hesitation she accepted and he
held a light. After that she began to talk
in a low even voice without further
prompting.

“Sir Eric had rather a bad time when
war was declared,” she began. “No one
would have him and naturally he was
furious. He’d been in the Battle of Jut¬
land, you see — he was on the Barham —
and he came out of it with his life and
that’s about all. A shell splinter tore
away part of his chest and most of one
thigh, and he’s been practically an in¬
valid since then. But now we’re at war
he just had to do something and he
stormed about the War Office until Alan
got busy and finally managed to wangle
something for him in naval intelligence.”

“Alan?”

NANCY ALLISON said, “Alan is his
son,” and spots of color came back
to her cheeks. “He was a cadet at Dart-

George Harmon Coxe

mouth during most of the first war and
now he has a ship of his own — a destroy¬
er — and of course that made it all the
harder for Sir Eric to stand idly by. He
could have had a berth of some sort in
the Home Office but it would have been
a courtesy desk job and he knew it. The
job he took was a courtesy assignment,
too, but it was Navy and that made a
difference.

“Well” — she sat up, sparks kindling
in her1 eyes — “he surprised them all.
They didn’t pay much attention to him
and so when he did get a bit of informa¬
tion that seemed promising he followed
it up alone. In the end he was instrumen¬
tal in breaking up an important espio¬
nage group. One of the men arrested
was the head of the bureau and certain
documents were found that not only con¬
tained a list of agents operating here in
your country, but information about
their objectives and methods of operat¬
ing. He had copies of these documents
— and some photographs — with him.”

“And somebody found it out,” Casey
said.

“He was to deliver them to someone
from the Embassy staff tonight, so that
our intelligence bureau could combat the
efforts of these agents, whose job it is
to keep track of the movements of our
ships. He also hoped that by revealing
certain other information to your own
naval intelligence he might offer addi¬
tional facts that would be of vital im¬
portance to your country as well. ”

A spasm crossed her face and tears
welled up in her eyes as she spoke. “He
tried to save them. He could have given
up, but he tried to fight and he had
nothing to fight with but one good leg
and a cane.”

“And a heart,” Casey said, and found
his throat hard and thick inside. He
looked down at his cigarette, mashed it
out savagely when he remembered
Wade’s, “I tried to give ’em an argu¬
ment, Flash. But they played kind of
rough.”

A sullen, smoldering rage came over
him and the muscles coiled at the side

of his jaw. "And where do you come
in?” he asked quietly.

“Come in?”

“How did you happen to come over
with him? Why didn’t you stay at the
same hotel?”

“Oh, I’m in the Women’s Royal Na¬
val Service.”

“What they call a WREN?”

"Yes. We drive cars and do cipher
work and decoding — that sort of thing.
I was helping Sir Eric.”

“And you’re in love with his son.”
Her eyes were enormous on his and he
saw the answer there and said : “So you
came along to look after him.”

“He thought it better that I travel
separately and stay at a different hotel,”
she explaind dully. “He — he loved to be
mysterious about things. He was so
pleased that he could help. I came to you
for the picture without his knowing it.
If I had only stayed with him — ”

CASEY stood up. “There’s an an¬
tique shop in town called Radnor’s.
Ever hear that name?” he asked.

“Why, yes,” she said quickly, her eyes
widening. “Sir Eric mentioned that
name to someone over the telephone
once. That — that’s where I was going
when you came.”

“All alone, huh?”

“I had to. I didn’t know quite whom
to call, and the Embassy men weren’t
coming until ten, and I knew the police
would be around and — well, there are
copies of those papers, but by the time
anyone could do much about it the agents
listed would be able to scatter. And it
wasn’t only that.”

She broke off and he saw that the
tears had stopped. She was looking be¬
yond him at something which she alone
could see. There was some strange and
shining faith in her face but when she
spoke he knew this dream of hers had
slight basis in reality and he felt again
the thickness in his throat.

“Maybe it sounds silly to you,” she
said, still not looking at him, “but more
than anything else in the world I want

Casey and the Blond Wren

the envelope the murderer took. Not for
what it contains, but because if I have it
no one will ever know that Sir Eric
failed. I could tell them he gave it to me
for safe-keeping, that I had it all the
time. And then Alan and the others he
worked with — well — they’ll all know he
carried on and that after all they made
no mistake in trusting him. If I could
only do that for him — You do see,
don’t you?”

“Yes, I see,” Casey said.

“Only” — the fire of her desire and im¬
agination went out of her eyes — “I guess
there was nothing I could do. I wanted
to find Radnor. I was going out to look
— don’t ask me where. It was stupid of
me. I knew it then. There isn’t even
such a name in the telephone directory.”

Casey blinked his surprise. “Are you
sure?”

Furrows appeared over his shaggy
brows as he pawed through the tele¬
phone book and saw that she was right.
He tossed it back on the stand, his eyes
sleepy in a grim sort of way.

“There’s a fellow I want to see,” he
said thoughtfully, “and after that maybe
we can take a look together. Want to?”

“Very much,” said Nancy Allison.

■ OYLSTON STREET
was alive with light and

IM ivSwT t^ie movement °f mid-eve-

ning traffic. Around the
corner, Lakeland Street
was lifeless until morning,

■ ^ J its shop windows dark and

the sidewalks deserted.

Hoxie’s cab swung toward the curb in
the middle of a block, stopping before a
modernistic narrow front sandwiched
between a book store and a milliner’s.
The windows, closed off by wooden
panels at the back and filled with chairs
and vases and shawls, mirrored the
progress of the cab against the darkness
of the street, and across the glass panel
in the door was the word Jerauld’s.

“Where do you see Radnor’s?” Casey
demanded.

“I don’t see it,” said Hoxie, “but this

is where I took the guy. He got out in
front of the book store and when I pulled
out from the curb I see him turning in
here.”

“Could we wait?” Nancy Allison
asked.

“Yeah.” Casey climbed out, pulling
his camera and platecase after him.

Two cars sped by while they were
talking, and after Hoxie had driven off
Casey saw a man smoking in the door¬
way of a brownstone front across the
street where a Rooms T o Let sign hung
in the window. Other than this they
were alone in Lakeland Street.

They lit cigarettes as they stood there
on the sidewalk, and it was not until
Casey moved through the entrance and
up to the door that he noticed a crack
of light squeezing past the drawn shade.

“Hah!” he grunted softly and angled
around until he got his eye to the crack.
Gradually a section of the interior
emerged from the shadows and he saw
that beyond the darkness in the fore¬
ground a light gleamed, its beam focused
upon some sort of screen. When his eye
adjusted itself he identified a silhouette
before the screen as a man — on his knees
— doing something to the screen.

“What is it?” Nancy Allison

breathed.

“Somebody’s in there,” said Casey,
and knocked loudly on the door. He had
to knock again before the lock clicked
back and the door inched open, framing
a face that had no substance in the shad¬
ows.

“What is it?” The voice was gruff,
irritable.

“Is Mr. Connolly here?” Casey asked
casually.

“No.”

“That’s funny. I was told he worked
in one of these stores. You don’t happen
to know — ”

“No. He doesn’t work here. I don’t
know any Mr. Connolly.”

Casey kept one eye on the door. It
had opened perhaps a foot during the
conversation and he made out certain
details — the solid blond face, the deep-

George Hannon Coxe

set eyes, the hand that remained steady
in the coat pocket, fashioning a hump
that pointed straight ahead.

“O. K.,” he said. “Sorry to bother
you.”

Behind him Nancy Allison made a
sucking sound. Casey backed a half-step,
his eye still on the door as it started to
close. He waited until the last instant,
until only an inch crack remained. Then,
before the lock could click, he drove his
lowered shoulder against the door.

The door flew open a foot or so,
checked suddenly against the body be¬
hind it, bounced, then went wide as the
drive of Casey’s powerful legs knocked
the man over backwards. Carried off
balance by his charge he went down on
top of the fellow, grabbing for the hands
and pocket as he dropped and trapping
the gun. He took a wild, futile punch
on the cheek, then he was on his feet,
dragging the man with him, ripping the
gun from the pocket.

That ended it and he asked Nancy
Allison if she could lug his platecase into
the shop and close the door. He found
a light-switch and snapped it on. They
went along a thick carpet between rows
of miscellaneous furniture and pottery
and tapestries to a cleared area at the
rear where there was a desk. The single
light focused upon a large oriental screen
standing a few feet in advance of several
others like it.

All this had happened without a sound
from the blond man. Even now, as Casey
studied the handsome sullen face, he said
nothing, but stood immobile, his eyes
wild with hate and frustration.

“Take a look through the desk,” he
told Nancy Allison.

r HEN the girl bent
over the desk Casey
stepped up to look at
the screen, noticing a
small easel, a glassful
of tiny brushes, a pot
i of varnish. He felt of
the screen, found it sticky to his touch.
Then, as he started to circle the blond

man, he saw the piece of paper sticking
from his coat pocket.

The fellow jerked about but when he
felt the thrust of the gun he bit his lip
and stiffened. Casey unrolled a thin,
tissue-like piece of paper. Upon it was
drawn a plan of some sort. He could
make nothing of it. It did not seem
complete, but rather a part of some larg¬
er unit, the central points being desig¬
nated by numbers. Frowning, he put it
on the desk and asked Nancy Allison if
she had found anything.

“Yes,” she said without enthusiasm,
“but — not the envelope.”

Casey’s lips tightened and he let his
eyes move about the room. A topcoat
thrown over a chair held his gaze and,
moving to it, he put his hand in one of
the pockets. Instantly a quick gleam
shone in his eyes. Then the lids nar¬
rowed and got sleepy and he took out
six or seven plateholders. When he had
slipped them into his own topcoat pocket
he called Nancy Allison over and gave
her the gun.

“Watch him,” he ordered, and
shrugged out of his coat.

The blond man stood perfectly still at
first, but as Casey approached his eyes
darted from side to side, and he began to
back up. He kept moving backward, eyes
held by Casey’s now, until he touched the
wall. Then, with a quick, desperate shift¬
ing of weight, he whirled and lashed out
with his right.

Casey took the blow on his forearm,
grabbed the fist and spun the fellow, at
the same time driving his own right hard
against the mouth.

“That’s for Wade,” he said, and
caught the man as he slumped, dragging
him over to lower him into a chair.
“Where’s Radnor?” he demanded when
the man opened his eyes.

The eyes blinked. For a brief instant
fire flashed, but some inner impulse
quickly quenched it, leaving them dull
and stubborn. Casey slapped him twice,
hard, rocking the man’s head. He looked
over at the girl, who stood watching him
with eves wide and face stiff.

Casey and the Blond Wren

He sighed regretfully, stepped back.

“I guess we’ve got to wait for Mr.
Radnor,” he said. "But now I think I
know the guy I'm looking for.” He
paused, seemed reluctant to finish. “On¬
ly I think maybe we ought to have some
help.”

He picked up the telephone as he
spoke and called police headquarters.
When he was told that Lieutenant Lo¬
gan was out he left word to have him
call this number, and then looked up the
listing of the local office of the F. B. I.
He knew the agent in charge here, but
it did not help because there was no
answer.

“I’m glad,” Nancy Allison said quiet¬
ly when he hung up, and he eyed her
curiously, not quite understanding, until
she said: “Now we’ll have to wait right
here, won’t we?”

“For a while,” Casey said, remember¬
ing now the goal this girl had set

The odds against success and the risk
involved meant nothing to her. This, it
seemed, was a better chance than she
had hoped for, and nothing mattered
now save that she find the envelope for
Sir Eric.

Pity fused his thoughts as he sensed
how very real and steadfast was her con¬
viction and how little the likelihood of
success. Thinking about this made him
ashamed of his own selfishness. Some¬
one had grabbed some of his plates, had
slugged Wade in doing it. And he was
sore and he’d set out in a bull-headed,
they-can’t-do-that-to-me mood to get
back those plates and pay off. Watching
Nancy Allison he knew that he was wit¬
nessing a drama of far greater impor¬
tance than anything he himself had ever
done. One man had given his life. This
girl stood ready to forfeit hers if neces¬
sary — and for something that had no
reward beyond that of doing one’s duty.

Troubled deeply by such thoughts he
stared for a long time at the screen and
paints and varnish, and gradually his
concern moderated and an enigmatic
brightness kindled in his dark eyes.

“Can you watch him all right?” he

asked the girl, and when she nodded, he
opened his platecase. Held together by
an elastic he found the cut filmholders
he sought, but he muttered softly when
he was unable to locate the filters he
wanted.

E WENT back to the
telephone, called the
Express, and talked
with Eddy, one of the
office boys. “Go down
to my desk, Eddy,” he
directed. “Top right-
hand drawer. You’ll find a box of filters.
They’re all marked. Bring down the
ultra-violet and infra-red ones.”

He gave Eddy the address, and had
started to explain his idea to Nancy Al¬
lison when it happened. Actually it hap¬
pened right before his eyes. He saw the
whole thing develop, yet he was power¬
less to stop it or to give any warning.

One second he was talking to Nancy
Allison and watching the blond man in
the chair. The next he was staring at a
door in the rear wall behind her that had
opened a silent foot and now framed the
snout of a heavy automatic. Before* he
could speak the man behind the gun was
in the room and a thick deep voice with
a snap to it said: “Drop it, lady!”

Casey froze as he saw her hesitate.
She stood stiff and straight, brows high,
her hand tight on the gun. But she did
not drop it. She started to turn.

“No!” yelled Casey. She looked at
him and stopped, bewildered and hesi¬
tant. “Let go of it!” he ordered. “It’s
O. K. Drop it.”

He relaxed and began to breathe again
when the gun thudded to the floor. After
that the man in the door took on individ¬
uality — a thin, dark man with a long
pointed jaw and a scar across his mouth.

“He’s the one !” Nancy Allison’s voice
rose sharp and bitter. “He did it!”

Casey stared, incredulous. No! This
could not be Radnor. This was the man
Hoxie had described, one of those who
had slugged Wade. This wasn’t the man
who . Not until then did Casey

George Harmon Coxe

realize that Nancy Allison was not look¬
ing behind her, but straight ahead.

He wheeled. There, coming through
the front door, a key in one hand and a
gun in the other, was a squat, dark man
with thick-lensed glasses. Casey knew
then that the girl was right, for this was
the man who had been in the background
of his finder when he had taken the pic¬
ture of Sir Eric.

“Yeah,” he said thickly as the man
advanced. “It had to be that way. You
were the one who didn’t dare have your
picture printed. You were at the dock to
follow Sir Eric, huh ? And you sent your
two guns to get the plate back. One of
them saw me give the plates to Wade
and — ”

“He did it!” Nancy Allison said
again. She hadn’t moved and her eyes
were still wide. “I saw him come around
the corner of the corridor when I went
to see Sir Eric.”

The squat man’s shoulders moved in
a shrug. “It was too bad,” he said in a
voice that was curiously soft for his
bulk, a softness that seemed unhealthy
aqd menacing as he continued. “We had
little time.” He glanced at the girl. “Not
until this morning was I notified by radio
that Franz had been taken and that you
and Sir Eric were due today.”

“You murdered him,” she said.

“He attempted to struggle.” He said
this regretfully.

“He was practically a cripple,” Casey
said grimly.

The man shrugged. “He tried to use
his pistol.”

“You took the envelope,” Nancy Alli¬
son said, “tfou are Radnor.”

“Yes,” the man said, and there was a
certain cold pride in his manner.

From the corner of his eye Casey saw
the blond man move. He had seen him
retrieve the gun Nancy Allison had
dropped, but his attention had been fo¬
cused on Radnor. He turned too late.

He saw the hate flame in the eyes, the
swinging hand that ended in the gun.
Nancy Allison screamed and he pulled
away — but not enough. The barrel

whipped against his jaw and something
exploded in his head and he sagged to
one knee. Through the hum of noise and
the pounding of pain he heard a soft
voice say : “That can wait, Philip.
Please. We haven’t time now. Waldo
has the light truck in the alley. Load
the screens.”

Philip sulked. A pout appeared on his
handsome blond face and reluctantly he
put away his gun. “I haven’t finished
this one,” he said, and, picking up the
brush and varnish pot, resumed his
work.

Casey got to his feet, the inflection of
the squat man’s, “That can wait, Phil¬
ip,” ringing in his ears. It was spoken
softly, but with a dispassionate clearness
that hit him with a sickening jolt. He
looked across at Nancy Allison, looked
at her and knew that he had involved
her in something more desperately fan¬
tastic than he had ever imagined.

There was more at stake here than
assault and murder. This time he had
stepped out of his class. This was big-
league. And when Radnor was ready to
leave, Casey was aware that he and
Nancy Allison would not be left behind.
And yet, somehow, he did not think she
minded as much as he did.

E WATCHED Phil¬
ip finish with the var¬
nish and put aside his
painting parapherna¬
lia. Waldo, meanwhile
had started to carry
the other screens to
the alley. Then Casey remembered some¬
thing, and, remembering, knew that
there remained one chance that he would
have to take.

Casually he moved his hand toward
his pocket, checking the movement open¬
ly when Radnor said: “You will keep
your hands where I can see them.”

“Sure.” Casey shrugged and turned
to Nancy Allison. “Have you any ciga¬
rettes in that bag?”

He stepped slowly, idly, toward her
as he spoke and his eyes signaled as best

Casey and the Blond Wren

they could. She moved her lips to speak
when, suddenly, something flickered in
her gray eyes, bringing a gleam of un¬
derstanding and hope. She began again,
saying: “Yes, of course.”

Casey held out his hand to receive the
bag, but she made no move to give it
to him. Then a sudden thrust of fear hit
him hard.

“Just toss it over,” he said quickly.

"I’ll get one for you,” she said, fum¬
bling with the catch.

Things happened so fast then that
only in retrospect could he put together
the proper sequence. She stood there
very straight and slim, with her shoul¬
ders pushed back hard and her young
face white and stiff with her determina¬
tion as she defied her fears.

He took one long step towards her,
saying: “No, wait! Nancy!”

Behind him he heard Philip’s ugly
warning. But he couldn’t stop. She had
her hand inside the bag now. He reached
out to grab it as she tugged at the gun
and then, when he saw he couldn’t stop
her, he lunged forward.

His hand found the bag and his shoul¬
der hit her arm, knocking her down be¬
hind the desk. Still moving, he went to
one knee and the automatic was in his
hand, and something hit the desk throw¬
ing splinters in his face and there was
an explosion of sound behind him.

He pivoted, gun up. Somewhere in
the distance there was the sound of com¬
motion against the background of a
crisp, incisive command.

Again a gun roared. Amazed that he
load not been hit he fired. A second,
louder explosion answered him back and
then he saw that Philip had dropped his
gun and started to sag toward the floor.

Not understanding, nor knowing if
his shot had hit Philip, he saw that Rad¬
nor had his hands up. Just inside the
back door were two men with guns in
their hands and moving in behind them
came two more. One was Waldo, his
arms raised. The other held a gun
against his spine.

“Just hold everything,” one of them

said while a second started for the front
door.

They were hard-eyed, efficient-looking
men, these three newcomers, strangers
to Casey, so that he stared at them with¬
out knowing what the score was until
the front door opened and he saw Mc¬
Manus, the F. B. I. agent he had tried
to telephone.

Not until then did he look back at
Nancy Allison. She had come to her
feet. She was staring at Radnor and sud¬
denly something in her eyes reminded
him of one more job that had to be done.
Quickly, while he still had time, he put
the automatic on the desk, stepped up to
the man, spun him over behind the desk
and let go with a hard left hook.

Radnor went down, toppling over
backward, and Casey said, “One for Sir
Eric,” and fell on top of him. In that
same falling movement he arched himself
so that he could slip one hand inside the
unconscious man’s coat. He had jammed
the bulky envelope up under his vest
before hard hands grabbed his shoulders
and a voice said, “Lay off !” and he was
dragged to his feet.

“Don’t you hit them when they’re
looking any more. Flash?” McManus
said dryly.

“This was an extra-special case,” Ca¬
sey said. “And where’ve you been? I
tried to call you.”

“Did you?” McManus cocked one
brow and blew out his breath. “We
weren’t quite ready but maybe it’s all
right.”

Casey, remembering now the man
who had lounged diagonally across the
street after the taxi had left them on the
sidewalk, said, "Oh.”

EFORE he could con¬
tinue, a pounding shook
the front door and when
it was opened in popped
Eddy, the freckle-faced
office boy, with Casey’s
_ filters.

“Have they heard from Wade?” Ca¬
sey asked.

George Harmon Coxe

“He’s going to be all right,” Eddy
said. “He’s come to already.”

Quick relief shone in Casey’s dark
eyes. “Hah!” he said gratefully, and
moved toward his platecase.

“Forget it,” McManus said. “No pic¬
tures of this, Flash.”

Casey saw that argument was useless,
but he opened his platecase nevertheless,
saying: “But I can get a couple shots of
that screen, can’t I?”

He knew from the way McManus
grinned at him that he couldn’t, so at
last he slipped on his topcoat and reas¬
sured himself by wrapping his hand
around the half-dozen plateholders in the
pocket before he said, crabbing in a tol¬
erant sort of way : “My pal, huh ? O. K.
But they’ve got pictures on them — those
screens. Underneath those fancy figures.
They ought to show up with the right
kind of filter.

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” McManus
said. He picked up the tissue sheet Casey
had tossed on the desk. “Harbor de¬
fenses,” he said. “The screens came in
a month ago, about thirty of them. When
customs found out they had reshipped
a few, we checked up.” He glanced at
one of the other men. “We’ve been
working it out with naval intelligence.”

After that Casey had to do some talk¬

ing. It took him quite a while, but what
he said was convincing and after Nancy
Allison had corroborated him McManus
seemed satisfied.

“But I still don’t get it,” Casey said
as he finished. “You didn’t know about
Sir Eric or the dope he had.”

“Not a thing,” McManus replied.
“The English are working on their prob¬
lems and we’re working on ours. It
just happens that this time we’re buck¬
ing the same outfit. Radnor had to reach
Sir Eric to protect his bureau — if what
you say is true. At the same time he
was doing this on the side” — he gestured
toward the screen — “for possible future
use. And that’s where we come in. ”

He glanced at Nancy Allison. “You’ll
want to get in touch with your Embassy.
If they want to cooperate it’11 be a help.”

He moved to the telephone and Casey
said, “I’ll have that cigarette now,” and
drew Nancy Allison into a corner. He
took her bag, opened it, slipped the en¬
velope into it from under his vest.
“You’ll have to see this thing through, I
guess,” he said quietly, "but here’s
something for you.”

“For Sir Eric,” Nancy said, her eyes
shining and her mouth soft.

“For Sir Eric,” said Casey, “and for
you.”

TOO TOUCH

By JOHN GRAHAM

^ HE parcel-room derk
in South Station gave
Vic Smail a nervous
wink at 9:25 o’clock
that morning. Then he
reached for the travel-
stained pigskin kit

bag, high on the rack above.

Vic brushed toast crumbs
from his lap, carefully put
aside a half-empty con¬

tainer of coffee. He stood up, strolled
toward the employees’ entrance, quietly
pulled the door shut behind him and
rounded briskly into the station corridor.

Out of the comer of his eye Vic saw
the man who was claiming the kit bag.
He was tall, about forty, deeply sun-

The taxicabs were caught
in the cross-fire — literally
ripped apart by the hail
of lead.

The trouble with some guys is they
don’t know the difference between
tough and too tough — too smart and
just smart enough.

John Graham

tanned, wearing a pearl-gray polo coat,
a gray plaid cap. Vic was sure he had
never seen him before.

The man took the bag from the count¬
er, counted out some change for the
clerk and started toward the taxicab
runway. Vic moved abreast of him.
weaving through a late rush of commu¬
ters. Across the broad station floor he
caught a glimpse of Ben Girsh, his friend
and fellow operative, sauntering into the
the lunchroom. Vic smiled to himself,
glanced back at his quarry. The man in
the polo coat appeared to be in no hurry
and Vic beat him to the platform doors
by a dozen steps. He hesitated, saw the
man was still coming and pushed on
through.

The platform was deserted save for
the starter, who lounged against a pil¬
lar rolling a cigarette. The only cab in
sight was .on the opposite side of the
runway and driverless. The starter
looked at Vic, wet the edge of the ciga¬
rette paper with his tongue and grinned.
He said: “No good, mister. Don’t you
read the papers?”

“What’s up?”

“Strike.”

“Again?”

The starter nodded. “The third tie-up
in two months. Can’t say as I blame the
boys.” He paused to light the cigarette.
“They walked out at six o’clock this
morning. ”

Vic looked across the runway.
“Whose hack is that?” he asked.

The starter shrugged. “Independent.
Musta got scared off. He drifted m,
messed around with what he said was
engine trouble. Pretty soon he went in¬
side.”

The man in the polo coat came toward
them, a puzzled frown on his face.
“Aren’t there any cabs?” he asked the
starter.

Informed of the taxi strike he said:
“Damn nuisance. I suppose I’ll have to
walk. How far is the Hotel Everlyn?”

The starter calculated. “Clifton Ave¬
nue at Twenty-third . A good

four miles.”

Vic Smail chimed in. “I’ve a car
parked down the street a couple of
blocks. If you’d like a lift . ?”

The man’s face was so brown that
his blue eyes seemed almost colorless
as they studied Vic. He smiled bleakly,
said : “I guess not. Thanks just the
same.” He turned back to the starter.
“Hasn’t that cab a driver?” he asked,
pointing across the runway.

“He’s gone inside,” the starter said.
“And it might not be safe . ”

“Nothing is these days.” The man
handed the starter a folded bill. “Will
you see if you can find him? I’ll wait
in the cab.”

Vic started hurrying along the plat¬
form toward the street and his own car.
The man in the polo coat was crossing
the runway. Vic glanced back and saw
him turning the handle of the cab’s
door.

An instant later there was an ear-
blistering crash. Vic toppled, landed on
hands and knees. The building rocked,
the concrete runway cracked and buck¬
led. The air was filled with choking
fumes, flying bits of metal, broken glass.
A woman’s scream echoed from the cor¬
ridor of the station. Vic knelt, shaking
his head to clear it.

When he turned he saw a twisted
mass of wreckage, the glimmer of flame,
a pall of smoke. There was no sign of
the man in the polo coat.

IC leaned forward on
the edge of the desk,
mopped his round red
face, smoothed back
still damp wisps of
hair. “That’s all there
is to it, boss,” he said.
“He was there one minute — then boom !”

Les Stoddard, head of the Aetna
Agency, sat looking out the office win¬
dow, chin down, unspeaking. He was a
little man, almost frail in appearance,
with sloping shoulders, delicate hands.
His face was solemn, deeply lined, some¬
what melancholy. Among the things you
first noticed about him were his eyes,

Too Tough 69

deep-set, a smoldering brown, specula¬
tive yet kindly — and his hair, snow-
white and very thick. He remained mo¬
tionless, as if listening intently to the
ticking of the office clock and Vic Smail’s
labored breathing. After a while he
shifted slightly and asked in a dull voice :
“How about the kit bag?”

Vic shrugged. “He took it with him.”

Without changing expression, Stod¬
dard said: “That’s one way of blowing
fifty thousand bucks. ”

“Fifty thou . !” Vic jerked

back. “You mean he had it in the bag?”

“What did you thjnk was in it? Old
newspapers?”

“I didn’t know,” Vic confessed.
“Nothing was said to me, except that
T was to relieve Ben Girsh in the check¬
room at nine o’clock and watch that
bag.”

Stoddard’s eyes narrowed as he turned
from the window to face Vic. “By the
way, who was it told you to do that?”

“Cora told me,” Vic answered.
“Why?”

“Cora Winters?”

“Naturally. I wouldn’t be taking or¬
ders from anyone else. She’s your own
secretary, and when she phoned. ... .

“What time was that?” Stoddard cut
in.

“About one o’clock. I was in bed at
the apartment when she called. She said
you told her to.”

“It’s damn funny,” Stoddard mused.
“Do you happen to know where she is
now?”

Vic looked puzzled. “No, I don’t
know* anything about her. Why ?”

“She’s not here is all. Hasn’t shown
today. And her home phone doesn’t an¬
swer.”

“Maybe she’s sick,” Vic suggested.

Les Stoddard looked back at the win¬
dow. “I thought of that. Still, she ought
to call in.”

“She might have stopped at a doc’s.
Be in later.”

Stoddard nodded. “We’ll see. Now
tell me anything else about the affair at
the station that occurs to you.”

T>EN GIRSH came into the office
-■-* while they were talking. Heavy-set,
dark, and usually immaculate, Girsh
looked mussed and puffy-eyed from his
all-night vigil.

“Pick up anything?” Stoddard asked.

Girsh shook his head. “I didn’t have
a basket.”

“How about the cops?”

“It was a job for the fire department.
They needed a hose to clean up that
mess.”

“I don’t get it,” Vic Smail said. “Par¬
ticularly since he had all that dough in
the bag. With robbery for a motive — ”

Stoddard silenced him with a gesture.
“There’s more to this than robbery.”
He got to his feet, paced the office
slowly. “I’m going to let you mugs in
on it, although I admit I don’t want to
and will probably regret it. I planned
to manage this case alone. It needs spe¬
cial handling and care. No rough stuff
will do. And knowing you two and your
tactics. . .”

Vic, fidgeting, interjected: “Never
mind the preaching, boss. What’s up?”

“It’s got to be kept dead quiet,” Stod¬
dard warned. “Benton Meade, president
of the Gray Stripe Cab Company, was
snatched day before yesterday.”

He paused to let this information sink
in, noting- the astonishment on the faces
of Vic Smail and Ben Girsh.

“Meade was on the way home from
his office in a limousine,” Stoddard re¬
sumed. “Someone slugged the chauffeur
at a traffic-light stop, disappeared with
Meade and the car. The chauffeur came
to in a ditch about eight miles out of
town. He reported to no one but the
family. They came straight to me.

“You probably can guess why we
have to keep the hush on the whole busi¬
ness. Meade had a strike impending —
it’s here today — the third in a row.
Maybe the strikers had something to do
with this job. On the other hand, maybe
they didn’t. But it’s the wrong kind of
news to get circulated at a time like
this. That’s why it’s a case that has to be
handled with kid gloves.

John Graham

“The chauffeur says he didn’t see
anyone. He got smacked down before
he had a chance to turn his head. The
limousine was abandoned that night
down along the waterfront. The cops
picked it up — but only as a stolen car.
It’s back in the Meade garage. Nat¬
urally, the family’s in terrible shape.
Meade’s wife and daughter are on the
verge of collapse. But they’re dead
game, and in full accord with my ideas
for handling the case.

“Yesterday they got a note from the
kidnapers, who demanded fifty grand
cash, directed them to put the money in
a bag and have the chauffeur check it
at South Station. There was the usual
stuff about no cops and no new bills.
Then — and here’s the joker — the check
for the bag was to be turned over by
the family to someone from out of town
— anyone they wanted to pick as long as
he was a stranger here — who was to
claim the bag, get a cab at the station
and start for the Hotel Everlyn.”

Vic remarked: “Now I see why the
guy didn’t want a lift. ”

“You mean,” Ben Girsh demanded,
“that you offered him one?”

“Sure. How was I to know.

“The note stated further,” Stoddard
went on, “that the man in the cab would
be stopped enroute to the hotel, relieved
of the bag and allowed to go his way
unmolested. And that was all.”

“Jeeze!” Vic exploded. “That’s
enough!”

“You’d think so,” Stoddard agreed,
“but apparently the kidnapers don’t.
Now it’s murder in broad daylight, fifty
grand blown up and Meade still miss¬
ing.” He glanced at the office clock.
“Come to think of it, so is Cora.”

“What’s this?” Girsh inquired.

“She must have exhausted herself
waking up Vic on the telephone in the
middle of the night,” Stoddard said.
“Incidentally, Vic, I didn’t tell her to
call you.”

“You didn’t !” Vic Smail sat up again,
his eyes widening with surprise.

“Don’t be alarmed. Stranger things

have happened — and may very well con¬
tinue to happen.” Stoddard reached for
his misshappen felt hat on a wall hook.
“I’m going out for a talk with the Meade
family. There’s a couple of angles to
this. ...”

Vic said: “How about strike head¬
quarters, boss ? I know those union birds
from the last tangle.”

“Not a bad idea,” Stoddard agreed,
“if you’ll keep out of trouble and not tip
your hand. And, Ben, much as you need
sleep, I’m afraid you’ll have to keep the
office open for a while.

“What the hell ails Cora?” Girsh
grumbled.

“You might try to find out,” Stoddard
told him. “It’ll help you keep out of
trouble.” He pushed the telephone
across the desk and walked out quickly.

IC shouldered his way
through a crowd of
idle hackmen on the
sidewalk in front of
strike headquarters. It
was a bad-tempered
crowd, hard-eyed and
ominously quiet. Vic half expected a
rap on the head as he made his way to¬
ward the stairs of the loft building. All
he got was a couple of surly looks.

The stairs were deserted as was the
meeting-room above. A gray light fil¬
tered through the dirty windows. News¬
papers and cigarette butts littered the
bare floor. Vic crossed to a hallway at
the back of the room, pushed open a
door marked Private.

Ed Holohan, red-headed, thick-necked
business agent of the hackmen’s union,
started up belligerently.

“Can’t you read, you - !”

“Easy, Ed,” Vic counseled. “Your
blood pressure.” He moved into the
room, faced Holohan across the desk.
“Just a social call. I dropped in to see
how you and the boys are doing.”

Holohan eyed him coldly during a
long pause. Finally he said : “Drop out,
Vic. On your way. What we’re doing
is none of your business.”

Too Tough

Vic shrugged goodnaturedly and
seated himself on the desk-edge. “You’d
rather have me than the law, wouldn’t
you?” he asked.

“No!” was the prompt reply. “We

got nothing to be afraid of . unless

you’re stooling for the fleet-owners
again.”

“You’ve got me wrong, Ed.”

“Not this time. You helped to glom
the last strike for us.”

“Don’t be childish. You didn’t have
the strength to swing it last time. I saw
that and said so. If that was spoiling
your strike . . . O.K., I did it.”

"We got the strength this time ! There
won’t be a hack on the streets until the
employers meet our demands ! Now run
out and peddle that around ! ”

“Sure I will ... if it’s true. You guys
deserve a break.”

“Never mind the sob stuff. We’re
making our own breaks this time. We’ve
got them on the run. Benton Meade’s so
scared he won’t even see us.”

“What makes you think so?”

“I’ve tried for two days to fix a con¬
ference. His office is stalling. They say
he’s busy.” Holohan laughed harshly.
“I’d like to know what doing!”

“So would I,” said Vic, glancing
sharply across the desk.

“Huh?”

“Nothing.” Vic riffled the pages of a
telephone book, pushed it away. “May¬
be he’s lining up some new drivers.”

Holohan’s jaw shot out, his color
mounted. “Let him!” he yelled. “And
if you were sent to tell me that, you
take back word that we know what to
do with scab drivers when they hit the
street !”

“My! Myl You wouldn’t resort to
violence, would you, Ed?”

“You figure it out. If Meade is run¬
ning in scabs — yeah, and private dicks —
we’ll show him what fight means!”

Vic nodded, then asked : “Who’s run¬
ning in the bombers?”

Holohan barked angrily: “You tell
me!”

“I’m asking you,” Vic persisted.

“Anything else you’d like to know?”

Vic straightened, got to his feet.
“There is,” he said, “and you’ve got all
the answers.”

“So what?”

“So you’d better start telling me be¬
fore I start beating them out of you.”

“Why, you - !” Holohan came

up with an obscene snarl, flinging over
the heavy desk as if it were cardboard.
Vic jumped back, snapping the door lock
with one hand, whipping out his auto¬
matic with the other. Holohan stood
rooted, tense, his eyes on the gun.

Vic said: “If you’re not heeled, Ed,
we’ll do it this way.” He stepped for¬
ward, tossing the automatic into a waste¬
basket in the corner of the room. His
left fist lashed out, crashed Holohan’s
jaw.

THE big red-head went back a step
then hunched his shoulders, charged.
Vic poked another hard left to Holo¬
han’s nose. Blood spurted. Holohan
came on, hurling ponderous blows. Vic
ducked and sidestepped, shooting short
punches at his opponent’s head. Sud¬
denly Holohan closed, smothered him in
a bear-like grip. Together they thudded
to the floor.

Holohan freed one arm, clubbed at
Vic’s face. Vic covered, gouging with
his elbows. He squirmed desperately as
Holohan reached for the wastebasket.
He saw the man’s fingers claw at the
edge, heard the basket topple. With a
quick twist he came up, pinioning Holo¬
han’s outstretched arm beneath his knee.
As Holohan rolled, Vic rolled with him,
locking his other leg around the trapped
arm, putting on the pressure with both
hands.

Holohan struggled, kicked, reached
for Vic’s throat with his other hand. But
the armlock held, grew more intense.
Sweat rolled from the big man’s ago¬
nized, blood-streaked face. His teeth
gritted. There was a battering on the
office door, shouts outside.

Vic gasped: “I’ll break it, Ed, if you
don’t talk fast!”

John Graham

Holohan made one final effort to free
his arm, sank back groaning as the hold
tightened. The noise at the door grew
louder.

“Quick!” Vic panted. “Or else. . . !”

“See Gordon,” Holohan moaned. “It’s
Link Gordon.” As the armlock eased
off, he babbled: "Gordon’s brought
hired guns into town. He’s gonna set
himself up as an independent while we
fight the fleets. . . .”

Vic prompted: “And it was an inde¬
pendent cab that went up at South Sta¬
tion.”

Holohan mumbled: “They’ll try to
pin it on us . . . just like you. ...”

“You half-wit!” Vic snapped. “I
wasn’t trying to pin anything on you.
I just wanted some information.” He
got to his feet, scooping up the auto¬
matic.

“Next time I ask questions be a little
more civil, will you?”

Holohan, still on the floor nursing his
arm, pleaded: “Lay off this, Vic. We’ll
take care of everything, including Gor¬
don.”

Vic mopped his face, avoiding a rap¬
idly swelling eye. He said : "I’ll let you
know about that later, after I’ve seen
Gordon myself. Now call off those
mugs outside before I have to shoot
somebody.”

Holohan stood up, unlocked the door.
Vic was behind him, gun in hand. “It’s
all right, boys,” Holohan said to the
group in the doorway. “A little personal
matter between Vic and me. He’s leav¬
ing now. Let him alone — for the time
being.”

Vic, walking out, called over his shoul¬
der: “I’ll be seeing you, Ed, out of my
good eye.”

TODDARD sat
scowling across the of¬
fice desk at Vic Smail.
“It’s what I’ve always
told you,” he com¬
plained. “You can’t
think beyond a fight.
If you can’t use a gun or fists you’re not

interested in a case. Hell, what are your
brains for?”

Vic cupped his sore eye gingerly and
tried to look sheepish. “I got a lead on
that bombing and maybe some future
strike trouble,” he pointed out. “If this
Gordon — ”

“You got a face that looks like a
horse stepped on it,” Stoddard corrected.
“Why not use your head instead of
your muscle, at least part of the time?”

“O.K., boss.”

“I mean it,” Stoddard insisted. “You
and Girsh are just alike. You think
you’re tough — hard guys. But it’s a
lousy way to do business and I don’t
like it.”

“O.K., boss.”

“Tell Girsh what I said, if you can
find him.”

“He left a note here. Said he’d located
Cora at St. George’s Hospital and was
going out there. She was brought in
unconscious from an overdose of barbi-
tol.”

“Barbitol? What was the matter?
Couldn’t she sleep?”

“Don’t ask me.”

“Send some flowers. I’ll try to get
out and see her tomorrow.”

“The Meade thing’s keeping you
busy?”

“They ought to be getting anot r
note from the kidnapers soon . . . seeing
as how the first fifty grand was blown
up.”

"That makes it pretty expensive,”
Vic said reflectively. “Who was the fel¬
low in the polo coat?”

“Lawrence Dean. Did you ever hear
of him?”

Vic shook his head.

“Neither did I,” Stoddard said, “but
it seems he was a steel man, well-to-do,
sweet on Meade’s daughter. He drove
up from Oreville last night at her re¬
quest and went to the station this mom*
ing to do the job for them. You know
the rest.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Keep working.”

“And the cops?”

Too Tough

"Not yet I may have to call them in
later. A lot depends on the way the
strike progresses.”

“You want me to stick on that?”

Stoddard sighed. "If I could trust
you — ”

“Sure you can, boss.”

“Remember, we’re not representing
anyone officially. But if you get hold of
anything concerning Meade’s where¬
abouts — ”

“Sure. I understand.”

“And not a word about this fellow
Lawrence Dean,” Stoddard cautioned.
“If the cops link him with the Meade
family the cat’s out.”

“Don’t worry,” Vic said. “I’ll stick
to the strike. Maybe if I could settle
it they’d turn in Benton Meade.” He
walked toward the office door adding:
“Of course that’s just a crazy idea of
mine.”

“Crazy is right,” Stoddard assured
him

MERGING from the lobby of the
building, Vic saw Livingston and
Novak, from headquarters, standing on
the curb beside his car. He turned back
quickly but Livingston overtook him be¬
side the elevator-bank.

“Relax, Vic,” the detective said.

Vic replied casually : “I’m pretty busy
right now. Drop around tomorrow or
the day after.”

“This is a pinch, Vic.”

“What the hell for?”

“Assault and battery. Ed Holohan’s
the complainant.”

“I don’t believe it.”

Novak had edged up, watching Vic
carefully. Livingston said: "I don’t
care whether you believe it or not.
We’re taking you in.”

“I had a row with Holohan,” Vic ad¬
mitted, “but it was strictly a personal
matter.”

Livingston nodded. “I can tell from
looking at you. Come on.”

Vic went with them, complaining :
“Imagine that heel, Holohan. We have
a little fight and he turns me in.”

Novak laughed. "Let’s use your car,
Vic,” he said. “You drive.”

The two detectives crowded into the
front seat beside him and Vic started
the motor, pulled away from the curb.
On the way downtown, Livingston
asked: “What was the trouble with
Holohan? Strike stuff?”

“Well,” Vic answered, "maybe.”

“Come on, let’s have it. We’ll be
mixed up in that strike ourselves if the
going gets rough.”

“I don’t know anything about it.”

“No, of course not,” Livingston
scoffed. “That’s why Benton Meade
hired you during the last strike.”

“Well, he hasn’t this time.”

“Why not?”

“Ask him.”

“But still you beat up the union’s
business agent. It doesn’t make sense.”

“I told you it was a personal matter
between Holohan and me. We don’t
like each other.”

“All right, but why pick out today
to sock him? D’you. think Holohan
planted that bomb for you?”

Vic blinked. “What bomb?” he said
quickly.

“You know the one I mean.”

Vic hesitated, then laughed. “You’re
screwy, Livingston.”

"You’re not going to tell me you
weren’t at South Station this morning.”

“Oh, I was there all right. But if
Holohan was trying to bomb me this
morning he wouldn’t be running to you
now and squealing that I slapped his
face.”

Livingston thought it over. “You
can’t tell. I don’t trust Holohan any
more than I do you.”

“How much is that?” Vic inquired.

“About as far as I could drop-kick
this automobile.”

"I’m not flattered,” Vic said, “if the
size of your feet are any indication. ...”

Livingston interrupted with, “Never
mind! Let’s get back to the bombing.”

“There’s no hurry,” Vic said. “I’ll
have to answer these foolish questions
all over again at headquarters.”

John Graham

“That’s right,” Livingston agreed.

Vic swung the car off Pearl Street
and headed through Public Square. A
moment later he jammed on his brakes
and yelled: “Look, you guys! Some¬
one’s getting lumps!”

A crowd of grim-faced, determined
men had surrounded a taxicab diagonal¬
ly across the roadway. The driver had
been forced to stop or run them down.
Now he was being dragged, fighting,
from behind his wheel. Some of the
crowd were jerking at the handles of
the cab door, others were stabbing at
the tires.

Novak, jumping out of the car,
shouted: “Hold it, Vic! I’ll take care
of this!”

At that moment a man in the back
seat of the taxicab started shooting. The
roar of gunfire topped the din about him
with complete finality and was followed
by a second’s breathless hush. Then the
mob broke and began to scatter, running.
All but two men, who lay where they
had flopped to the pavement, sprawl¬
ing.

Livingston had a police .38 in his
hand, climbing out of Vic’s car. “You
wait here,” he muttered.

Vic saw the cab-driver kicking fran¬
tically at his starter and the gunman at
the sliding window behind him shout¬
ing orders. But the taxicab refused to
start.

With sudden decision Vic eased his
own car into gear and pulled down the
street. The move left Livingston uncov¬
ered, sent him scurrying into a doorway.
Vic glanced back, laughing, then spun
the car around in one turn. Motor rac¬
ing, he pulled abreast of the taxicab,
knocked open his door.

“In here, punks!” he shouted.
“Quick!”

The driver hesitated, but the gunman
came clambering across the running-
boards at once. He ducked into the seat
beside Vic, yelled : “Let’s go ! They got
nothing on himf’

Glass broke behind them. In his rear¬
view mirror Vic saw Novak approach¬

ing on the run, pistol smoking. He
slumped over the wheel, released his
clutch and sped recklessly across the
square. Swerving into a side street with¬
out cutting speed, Vic saw Livingston
and Novak both shooting after him. He
grinned maliciously, drove through a
red light at the next intersection, then
made a sharp right turn and cut into an
alley.

“All right,” Vic told his passenger.
“You’d better drop that rod overboard,
just in case. Then sit up. We’re hitting
the main stem.”

The gunman complied. “Where you
taking me, pal?” he asked.

“Back to Link Gordon, safe and
sound,” was the answer. “Tell me the
quickest way to get there.”

W E N T Y minutes
drive along the water¬
front and Vic, at the
gunman’s direction,
pulled up in front of
what appeared to be
an abandoned ware¬
house. Windows of the dilapidated brick
building were boarded up and the heavy
double doors at the end of the driveway
sagged on rusty hinges.

Nevertheless, the doors swung open as
Vic’s passenger got out and approached
them. He motioned Vic inside and fol¬
lowed on foot. “Pull up and wait,” he
called. "I’ll tell the boss you’re here.”
He started away, then came back to in¬
quire: “What’s your name?”

Vic told him, saw that it failed to reg¬
ister.

Meanwhile the doors had been closed.
Vic watched half a dozen men in mechan¬
ics’ overalls moving about the shadowy
interior of the long room. Lined against
the walls in double rows were taxicabs
— the independent variety. There was a
lighted workshop in the rear, noisy with
activity. Near the front doors he had
just entered, Vic spotted two armed
guards.

A creaking freight elevator descended,
a freshly painted cab was rolled off and

Too Tough

moved into the line across the floor.

Vic’s recent passenger returned, sum¬
moned him with a gesture. “Gordon’ll
see you upstairs,” he said. "He’s in a
lousy frame of mind.”

“What’s troubling him?” Vic asked.
“Six cabs smashed so far today and a
couple more pushed off piers.” The gun¬
man’s mouth moved in a sour grimace.
“This way — and talk fast.”

LINK GORDON, broad, bulky, with
a flat, scarred face and the neck
of a wrestler was standing with his back
to the wall of the cubicle he used as an
office, waiting for them. He shot a sus¬
picious look at Vic, but seemed amused
at the sight of his visitor’s black eye. He
waved the gunman from the office and
began: “You’re the Vic Smail who
works with Stoddard, so you ain’t here
to do me any good. I suppose I owe you
for keeping that hood out of the can.”

Vic shook his head, sat down. “I was
on the way to jail myself at the time,”
he said. “Your boys putting on a show
gave me a break.”

“What were you going in for?”
“Socking Ed Holohan.”

Gordon’s thick lips curled in a grin.
He took a square bottle and glasses from
a desk drawer, saying: “Then I still
owe you. Help yourself and tell me
what’s on your mind.”

Vic drank, studied Gordon who had
seated himself behind the desk. “It oc¬
curred to me,” he said, “we might go
on doing each other favors.”

“Maybe yes. It depends. What can
I do for you?”

“You can go on not liking Holohan?”
“That’s easy.” Gordon’s eyes nar¬
rowed with shrewdness. “And what do
you do?”

"Give you some information that will
save you a headache — and a lot of cabs.”

“So? That’s quite a fancy proposi¬
tion,” Gordon mused. “But I’ll tell you
plain, mister, I’ve already got the head¬
ache and I want no part of Holohan.”

“Listen,” Vic said, “You and I see
eye to eye on that buzzard. I hate his

guts. Sure it’s mutual, but he’s not wast¬
ing any love on you either.”

“So he’s a pain to both of us. So
what?”

“You be the doctor^” Vic said point¬
edly.

Gordon grinned again. “That’s what
I thought. You want some favor — a
murder. I should do the dirty work for
you and Stoddard? Yeah, and Benton
Meade.”

“Why Meade?”

“You’re tied in with him. Everyone
knows that.”

“Then everyone’s wrong. And it’s a
funny thing, you bringing that up. I
figured you were tied in with Benton
Meade.”

Gordon put his drink down, splut¬
tering. “Me!” What the hell. . . ?”

“Sure,” Vic said. “You’re not buck¬
ing him and the union both. Not single-
handed. You may be plenty tough and
have a good-sized roll, but — ”

“Never mind about that stuff,” Gor¬
don interrupted. “Let me tell you about
Meade.”

Vic sat forward attentively. “A
pleasure,” he said.

Gordon poured himself another drink,
swallowed it slowly. “On second
thought,” he said, “skip it. Either you’re
trying to con me or you’re plain nuts.”

“No,” Vic said, “but I may be wrong.
It was just an idea.”

“You’re full of bum ideas, mister,”
Gordon told him. “First you want me
to get Holohan for you — ”

Vic broke in: “Nothing the matter
with that. That’s still a good idea.”

“Look,” Gordon said with a show of
patience, “I’m a very busy man. I’ve got
enough trouble.”

“If that’s what you think now, wait
until tonight.”

“What about tonight?”

Vic hesitated. “I could say skip it,
too,” he pointed out, “only I'd like to
play ball with you and get Holohan prop¬
erly taken care of. So I’m going to go
right on doing you favors. Here’s the
layout.

John Graham

“The strikers are going to start shov¬
ing your cabs off the Doric Line pier at
nine o’clock tonight when the Norfolk
boat docks. They’ll be concentrated
there, set to wreck or sink every cab
of yours in the neighborhood.”

“Where’d you get this information?”
Gordon demanded.

“Straight from the feed-bag,” Vic said
blithely. “Strike headquarters.”

“And is Holohan going to be there at
the pier?”

“To the best of my knowledge, yes.”

Gordon cocked an eye at the ceiling,
pondered. “If you’re a right guy,” he
said slowly, “and this dope is anywhere
near correct, I’ll do you a favor that is
a favor. Maybe even a couple of favors. ”

“Take your time,” Vic said.

“It won’t be long if you’ve told me a
straight story,” Gordon said. "I’ll take
care of Holohan personally — tonight!”

"You’re not so tough to do business
with.” Vic offered his hand.

“We’ll see,” said Gordon.

' — ■ IVE minutes later Vic

was well away from the
warehouse, headed for
home by a devious back-
street route. When he
reached the apartment
he found Girsh wait¬
ing, propped up on the lounge, a half-
empty bottle of Scotch on the table
beside him.

Vic took one look at Girsh and moved
the bottle out of reach.

“I need it, Vic,” Girsh complained.
"I just came from the hospital. Cora
got it.”

“Cora got what?”

“A knife under the ribs. She’s dead
— murdered.”

Vic stiffened, sucked in a breath.
“How come?”

“A strange thing,” Girsh said, lean¬
ing back and closing his eyes. “She was
feeling better this afternoon, snapping
out of it, the nurse told me. She was in
a private room and had a couple of call¬
ers. The last visitor left just before I

arrived. The nurse said it was O.K.
for me to go in — she was sure Cora was
still awake.” Girsh moved shaking fin¬
gers across his forehead and reached for
his glass before resuming. “But it — it
was terrible, Vic. I stood there looking
at her — I don’t know how long. Then
I let out a yell that brought the nurse
running.

“Cora had rolled over on the knife.
The sheets were all stained red. ...”
Girsh’s voice died out, he turned his
face away.

Vic stood watching him, then moved
the bottle back across the table. “I feel
like a drink myself,” he said. "Poor
Cora. That’s tough.” He gulped down
a shot of the whiskey. “Didn’t the nurse
know. . . ?”

Girsh said quickly: “Not a thing.
They don’t take visitor’s names out
there. She only had a vague idea what
the guy ahead of me looked like.”

“But Cora hadn’t been dead long.”

“It was hard to tell. Maybe two min¬
utes — maybe ten. The nurse got pan¬
icky. The whole hospital was upset.”

“I can imagine,” Vic said. “What’d
you do?”

“Learned what I could,” Girsh a.
swered. “Gave them the information
they wanted in turn. Then I came out
here. I felt sick — still do.”

“Sure. Take it easy.” Vic walked to
the telephone table near the door, picked
up an envelope lying there. “Does Stod¬
dard know about Cora yet?”

“I doubt it, unless someone in the
hospital caught him at the office. They
expected me to tell him — but I hate to.”

“Naturally,” Vic agreed. “The boss
will be plenty upset. He was fond of
Cora. She’d been in the office a long
time.” He tore open the envelope, add¬
ing: “But I guess we better get word to
him, even if he has got the Meade case
on his mind.”

Vic unfolded the note paper, read it
quickly, glanced up. Then he studied
the note at length and re-folded it, smil¬
ing. “More news for the boss,” he said,
dialing the office number.

Too Tough

When Stoddard’s voice came over the
wire, Vic said : “Here’s a hot one, boss.
I just got a note from Benton Meade’s
kidnapers, warning me to lay off.”

“So did I,” Stoddard responded.
“What else did they say?”

“That if I don’t. I’ll get the same as
Lawrence Dean.”

“That’s a new line. Nothing like that
in mine. They know who they killed,
eh?”

“Apparently.”

“Save that note. I want to see it.
And how d’you suppose they figure
you’re on the case?”

“They probably know I work for you
and that you’re handling it,” Vic an¬
swered. “And, boss, there’s something
else.”

He hesitated, groping for words.

“It . . . it’s about Cora. ...”

Stoddard was silent a moment, then
answered in a low voice: “I’ve heard
about it. Is Girsh with you?”

“Yes. And pretty sick.”

“When am I going to see you two
again?”

“Later tonight. I’ve got something
pretty hot on the strike. Link Gordon’s
mixed up in it, but I can’t tell you any
more on the phone. Maybe we’ll get a
break out of it. I’ll know for sure by
ten o’clock.”

“All right, come in then. And tell
Girsh to do what he can about the other
— about Cora. I’ll want to take a hand
in that just as soon as I can get a
breather. ”

“Sure, boss.” Vic racked up the tele¬
phone, waited briefly, then dialed union
headquarters and asked to speak to Ed
Holohan.

“Listen, bum,” he said when the busi¬
ness agent answered, “this is your little
playmate, Vic Smail. Instead of trying
to put over a rap on me, here’s a real
job for you . . . that is, if you’re man
enough to go for it. All you’ve got to
do is bring your wrecking crew to the
Doric Line pier before the Norfolk boat
pulls in tonight. Link Gordon, in per¬
son, and his mob will be there. . . . Yeah,

in their cabs. Don’t thank me for the
tip, I only want to show you up for a
yellow rat.”

He hung up quickly and winked at
Girsh.

“Just setting the stage for a little
fracas,” he explained, working the dial
again. Into the phone he said : “Let me
speak to Livingston.”

The mention of the headquarters de¬
tective’s name brought Girsh upright,
muttering: “What the hell are you
doing, Vic. . . ?”

Vic winked again. “Get a load of
this.”

A MOMENT later the connection
clicked and Livingston’s answer
came over the wire. “Sorry I had to run
out on you this afternoon, Livingston,
old boy,” Vic began, “but I’m going to
make it up to you with some dope that’ll
put you in line for promotion.” He
waited patiently while the detective
raged, showering him with abuse. Then
he resumed : "So now I’ll tell you what’s
going to happen, pal. At nine o’clock
tonight Link Gordon and his hoods will
ride up to the Doric Line pier looking
for trouble. They’ll be set to gun out
any and all strikers. If you show there
with plenty of help you ought to bottle
up the whole mob. You’ll not only get
Gordon himself, you’ll do a lot toward
ending the strike. Thus you become a
hero, Livingston, a model cop — right
down to your fallen arches — due to the
consideration and good wishes of your
old chum, Vic Smail. ...”

Vic interrupted another tirade of
abuse by adding: “Take my word for it,
you’ll have a fight on your hands. All
hell’s going to pop.”

This time the detective began barking
questions.

Vic cut him short with, “That’s all I
can tell you, Livingston. Take it or
leave it.”

He hung up and turned to Girsh.
“Better begin pulling yourself together,
Ben. We’ve got a hell of a big night
ahead of us. . .

John Graham

;\ WO BLOCKS from
the Doric Line pier
Vic pulled into the
shadows and parked.
He glanced at his
watch. It was 8:45.
After a careful survey
of the street in both directions he slid
from behind the wheel and started on
foot for the pier.

Rounding into the side street that led
to the paved square fronting the pier
sheds, Vic noted with satisfaction that
the entire neighborhood was compara¬
tively dark. Street lamps were few and
far between, and trucks at the freight
entrance to the pier, and private cars
parked in the center of the square, had
their lights dimmed. The Norfolk boat
was not in sight.

Vic strolled casually along the side¬
walk, keeping in the shadow of the
building. No cabs had appeared as yet.
Only a handful of men loitered along
the curb.

As Vic passed a pile of crates that
jutted across the walk he was seized with
startling suddenness, spun around. A
powerful hand was clamped across his
face, wiry fingers jerked at his collar
from behind.

Vic shoved at the hand that was
smothering him. It came away to dis¬
close Holohan, the union boss, jaw
thrust out and regarding him with bale¬
ful eyes less than a half-step away. Vic
jerked, trying to free himself from the
choking holds, and realized that two
more pairs of hands had seized him from
behind.

"All right, wise guy!” Holohan was
snarling. “ Stay right where you are and
take it! You’re the one who arranged
this party. Now you can be guest of
honor !”

Vic gulped, tried to speak. A fist from
the darkness thudded against the side
of his head. Holohan warned : “None of
your lip ! You’ve talked enough for one
day!” He moved still closer, thrusting
his battered face near Vic’s. “It never
occurred to you that we’d have a couple

of men planted in Link Gordon’s outfit,
did it? Or that Livingston would check
your tip with us? Well, that’s where
you outsmarted yourself — trying to jam
us with Gordon’s mob and the cops at
the same time. Now if any shooting
starts you’ll get a front seat. Way in
front !”

Holohan broke off as a voice whis¬
pered from behind him.

He stepped to the curb and peered
across the square.

From the narrow street entrance was
emerging a line of taxicabs, newly paint¬
ed — all independents — heading toward
the pier. The cabs circled the central
parking space in the square, pulled into
the curb at the far end. Thus they com¬
manded the side street as well as the
square itself. Still the Norfolk boat had
not docked.

Calculating his chances in the event a
street fight broke, Vic decided to risk it.
With a quick twist he tore his right arm
free, dug for his shoulder holster. A
crashing blow on the jaw sent him spin¬
ning against another of his captors, but
the gun came out blazing.

The roar echoed across the square,
brought instant response from the parked
cabs. Flame belched from open rear
windows, bullets thudded into wooden
walls, ricocheted along the street. Vic
went down in a pile of diving, crawling
bodies. A heelplate ground into his
wrist and the automatic fell from his
grasp.

Sirens screamed in the side street and
the gunfire broke off abruptly . . . only
to be renewed a moment later with in¬
creased frenzy.

Squirming toward the curb, Vic
watched Gordon’s mob clash with the
police. The first of the taxicabs to leave
the square and head into the side street
were caught in a cross-fire, literally
ripped apart by a hail of lead. Tires
blew, glass splintered and above the din
of firing came the agonized yell of a
wounded driver, who leaped from his
seat, tottered crazily and plunged face
down to the pavement.

Too Tough

Vic saw the bulky Gordon clutching
a sub-machine gun and leading a knot
of gangsters in hurried retreat on foot
toward the pier. Police cars were edging
into the square and spreading out to
angle their fire at Gordon and his fol¬
lowers.

Vic raised to one knee, shouted :
"Here they come, Holohan ! We’ve got
Gordon trapped! Let’s take him!”

“Take him yourself!”

The voice came from behind a barri¬
cade of crates.

“Where’s my gun?”

A hand reached from the shadows
and knocked against Vic. His groping
fingers closed on the butt of an auto¬
matic. Crouching low, Vic ran into the
square, approaching Gordon directly
from behind.

Two of the gunmen with Gordon
dropped their weapons simultaneously,
broke for cover. Gordon hurled curses
after them without pausing in his fire at
the police cars that were closing in about
him.

Twenty yards in the rear, Vic stood
erect, bellowed : “Drop it, Gordon ! I’ve
got you cold!”

The mob leader whirled, weapon
flaming. Vic slid to the pavement, raised
his automatic, aimed carefully. Before
he could pull the trigger, Gordon gave a
gasping cough, slumped forward in a
heap. The sub-machine gun clattered to
the street. Four remaining mobsters
hesitated, unnerved, leaderless. The po¬
lice closed in with a rush.

VIC got to his feet in bewildered sur¬
prise as Les Stoddard climbed from
a police car, approached with Livingston
and Novak.

“Hey! What you doing here, boss?”
he shouted.

Stoddard walked closer, pushing back
his ancient felt hat to regard Vic with
sorrowful mien. “Winding up my case
is all,” he said. “Hand over your gun,
Vic.”

Vic’s lips twitched in a smile that
faded quickly as he observed Stoddard’s

revolver pointing at his chest. “What’s
up, boss?”

“Your game.” Stoddard spoke cold¬
ly, his eyes glued to Vic’s. “Your squeeze
play didn’t quite come off. Now hand
over that gun. The police want you.”

Vic surrendered the automatic with a
shrug. “The heat’s got you, boss. Liv¬
ingston wanted me for assaulting Holo¬
han, but after this night’s work he ought
to reduce it to a “dis con” rap or spring
me altogether.”

Stoddard smiled ironically. “He wants
you and Ben Girsh for murder, Vic.
Three murders, to be exact. Benton
Meade, Lawrence Dean and Cora Win¬
ters. We’ve got you dead to. . . .”

Vic dived forward, clutching at the
sub-machine gun beside Link Gordon’s
body. With a scarcely perceptible motion
of his arm, Stoddard batted his revolver
against the base of Vic’s skull.

Livingston knelt beside Vic, then
looked up.

“You were plenty quick with that,
Stoddard.” he commented approvingly.

Stoddard pocketed his gun slowly. “I
can be tough, too,” he said.' “When it’s
necessary.”

IC CAME to with an
aching head as the
squad car drew to a
halt fifteen minutes
later. He was bundled
out, marched between
Livingston and Novak
into Stoddard’s office. Girsh was there,
bound hand and foot to a heavy chair,
gagged with a towel.

“There’s the other one, Livingston,”
Stoddard said. “Neatly tied up for de¬
livery. ”

“Much obliged.” Livingston smiled
gratefully. “And what about this con¬
fession you spoke of?”

Stoddard said: “Take his gag out.
He’ll talk, He’s tired of being tough. I
smacked all that out of him earlier to¬
night when I caught him piling Benton
Meade’s body into the rumble seat of
his car. I was waiting in the garage in

John Graham

back of their apartment house, expecting
such a move. ”

Vic shuddered, sank to a chair. “You
— you’ve got Meade’s body?” he mut¬
tered.

“And that’s not all.” Stoddard reach¬
ed under his desk. “Here’s a pillow slip
I found hidden in your closet at the
apartment It contains the fifty grand
you took from that kit bag at South Sta¬
tion this morning, after sending the
checkroom clerk out to get you toast and
coffee.”

Stoddard turned to the headquarters
detectives. “That clerk will make you
fellows a nice witness. So will the cab-
starter at the station. He can identify
Girsh as the driver of the cab that blew
up when Lawrence Dean got in. The
bomb was wired to the springs itt the
rear seat. Weight on the springs com¬
pleted the circuit. You’ll find*, some left¬
overs from that homemade bomb in their
garage, also the license plates they
switched from the hack they stole and
later blew up.

“In case you’re puzzled,” Stoddard
continued, “the idea in back of the bomb¬
ing was not so much to kill Lawrence
Dean as it was to cover their theft of
the fifty grand. They didn’t know Dean
and had no motive for bumping him off
other than to completely stall any search
for that ransom money.”

Livingston, who was busily jot¬
ting notes on the back of an en¬
velope, said: “So much for the bomb¬
ing.”

“That’s only one item,” Stoddard a-
greed. “The Benton Meade snatch was
the start. Vic Smail and Ben Girsh
figured — and rightly — that the strike
trouble would result in a soft pedal on
the kidnaping and, what’s also important,
that I’d be called in to handle the case.
Thus, they’d be working on the inside,
presumably helping but actually hinder¬
ing me.

“They worked out the time element
carefully. They knew Meade. They
knew the strikers. Pretty well assured

the walk-out would be staged on sched¬
ule at six o’clock this morning, they laid
for Meade night before last and got him
without much trouble. You see, they’d
worked with him before, knew his hab¬
its, the route he drove home.

“But, by the same token, Meade knew
them. Which meant they had to bump
him off as soon as they got him. When
that was done, all that remained was to
collect the ransom by a tricky device
and then pin the blame for the whole
business on someone else. In casting
about for the logical victims of such a
frame-up, they hit upon Ed Holohan
and Link Gordon, both of whom had
plenty of reasons to want Meade out of
the way.

“Tnat’s where Vic started his squeeze
play — first getting Holohan into a fight,
later, pulling Gordon off his base with
that double-cross tip on trouble at the
pier. There was sure to be a fight down
there tonight — gunplay. Vic was ready
to kill Gordon himself if necessary. The
police saved him the trouble. But don’t
forget he was there, gun poised, when
Gordon got it. And I’ll tell you why he
was there.

“Vic and Girsh had decided to frame
Gordon for the kidnaping of Benton
Meade. Their plan was to have Girsh
dump Meade’s body in or near Gordon’s
warehouse headquarters while Link and
most of his mob were away, decoyed in¬
to a fight and, as it turned out, death.
Gordon, dead, couldn’t defend himself
from the rap they had framed for him.
Meanwhile they’d written some fake ran¬
som and warning notes. Vic even ad¬
dressed one to himself. All in line with
their plan of diverting suspicion and
throwing me off the trail.

“But I got on the right track late this
afternoon when Cora Winter’s brother
came to see me. He was the visitor that
preceded Girsh at the hospital. He
learned from Cora that she had over¬
heard Vic and Ben talking here in the
office about the Meade snatch, hours
before they were supposed to know any¬
thing about it. They guessed she’d

Too Tough

overheard them and realized their dan¬
ger.

"So Vic took Cora to dinner and
doped her drinks with barbitol. They
hoped to have the ransom money safely
cached and the kidnaping pinned on
someone else by the time she came out
of it. But when Girsh went to the hos¬
pital to check on Cora’s condition this
afternoon, he found her getting better
fast and plenty sore. She was so sore, in
fact, that she made the mistake of ac¬
cusing Girsh and Smail — and got the
works.

"Girsh admitted that. He told me of
stabbing her and holding her mouth
shut to stifle her cries until she died.
Then he sounded the alarm himself.
That helped him to escape once more,
but only temporarily.

“That was a bad bungle, their first
misplay. And Girsh realized it. Vic
must have too. Still they thought they
had a chance to come through, bluff it
out. But that stabbing shook Girsh up.
It broke his nerve. He cracked com¬
pletely tonight when I caught him in
the garage . ”

Vic Smail was on his feet, stumbling
across the room toward Girsh. He
screamed: "Rat! Yellow belly! Couldn’t
keep your damn mouth shut, could you ?
Now you’re going to burn! Both of us

will bum!” He broke off, babbling in¬
coherently.

Stoddard snapped: "Get a load of
that, Livingston! There’s a real break!”
He jerked the gag from Girsh’s mouth,
adding: “Fell for a little squeeze play
of mine, didn’t you, Vic ? Let Girsh tell
you — ”

“Shut up!” Girsh was yelling. "Keep
your mouth closed, Vic! I’ve told ’em
nothing!”

T^TIC SMAIL tottered backward a
* step, looked dazedly from face to
face, then began to sob hysterically.

Stoddard laughed grimly. “Tough
guy!” he mocked. Then to Livingston,
“Lock ’em up, copper. I guessed a part
of that story I just told you, but it was
mostly thq truth.”

Livingston untied Girsh, handcuffed
his wrist to Vic’s.

“They look good that way,” Stoddard
commented. “You might even stick
them in the same cell. It’d probably save
the state some trial money.”

“Come along and watch what I do
with ’em,” Livingston invited.

“Not me,” said Stoddard wearily.
“Tonight I’m going to get some sleep.
And tomorrow I’m going to get some
new operatives. Smarter ones, and not
too tough.”

"1 Talked with God '

<Yes, I Did — Actually and Literally)

and, u a result of that lltUe talk with God some ten
years ago, a strange new Power came into my life. After
48 years of horrible, sickening, dismal failure, this
strange Power brought to me a sense of overwhelming
victory, and I have been overcoming every undesirable
condition of my life ever since. What a change it was.
Now — I have credit at more than one bank, I own a beau¬
tiful home, drive a lovely car, own a newspaper and a
large office building, and my wife and family are amply
provided for after I leave for shores unknown. In addi¬
tion to these material benefits, I have a sweet peace in my
life. I am happy as happy can be. No circumstance ever
upsets me. for I have learned how to draw upon the

invisible God-Law, under any and all circumstances.

You, too. may find and use the same staggering Power
.. of the God-Law that I use. It can bring to you. too.
whatever things are right and proper for you to have.
Do you believe this T It won't cost much to find out — just
a penny post-card or a letter, addressed to Dr. Frank B.
Robinson, Dept. 891, Moscow, Idaho, will bring you the
story of the most fascinating success of the century. And
the same Power I use is here for your use, too. I’ll be
glad to tell you about it. AH information about this expe¬
rience will be sent you free, of course. The address again
— Dr. Frank B. Robinson, Dept. S91, Moscow, Idaho.
Advt. Copyright 1989 Frank B. Robinson.

THE FRAME THAT
DIDN'T FIT

By EATON K. COLDTH WAITE

And who should tumble out of the trunk but Studs Gerber, a small-time porch-climber that had
lately been spending a lot of somebody’s dough.

Introducing Duke Brian and his sidekick, Franny Steinmetz, a pair of
fast guys from Philly — and the amazing Mr. Fenwick Green, who always
got sick before he took a plane-ride instead of waiting till he got
g2 in the air, then usually decided to go by train after all.

The Frame That Didn’t Fit

< HE DOOR to Apart-
^ ment D-20 opened as
far as a length of
chain would let it. I
tipped my hat and told
the woman that I was
Duke Brian and the
guy with me was Franny Steinmetz.

She said, “Wait,” so I sank my heels
in the hall carpet and sniffed at the in¬
cense coming through the crack in the
door. I heard her repeat our names.
Then I heard a newspaper rattle and an¬
other pair of eyes, a man’s, showed at
a spot lower down. The man said, “Oh,
O.K!” Behind me I could feel my part¬
ner shift his gun from his shoulder to his
coat pocket. The crack narrowed and
the chain rattled and then the door
swung open all the way.

I spend a lot of time around Phila¬
delphia but I’d never seen him before.
He wasn’t very big and the butler’s out¬
fit made him look even smaller. He had
a face the color and texture of one of my
old golf balls. He had eyes that didn’t
stay aimed in one direction long enough
for me to decide whether they were
black or brown. He had a tight mouth
like he might be bleeding inside. He
stunk of cigarettes more than the room
stunk of incense. He said: “Come in,
Duke. I was afraid you wouldn’t get
here.”

I told him I’d been on my way to the
fights at the Arena when I got his
message. I said I supposed he was John¬
ny Devlin.

He bobbed his head. He said : “Yeah,
I’m Devlin. Franny knows me. H’ar’ya,
Franny.”

We crossed a foyer, and in one of
those girandole mirrors I saw my part¬
ner scowl and heave his shoulders. He
kept his hat on his head. He kept his
hands in his pockets. He grunted,
“H’ar’ya, Johnny.”

Like most of the apartments in Bel¬
vedere Towers this one had a dropped
living-room. There were monk’s cloth
drapes at the windows. There were a
lot of prints including a Currier & Ives

Skaters in Central Park. The furniture
was Hepplewhite and the rug was Gul-
istan. There was a stack of luggage with
the white-faced young woman standing
beside it on the rug. At the end of a hall
a door was open and I could see a
dining-room.

The little guy ducked behind us and
closed the door. He dropped the anchor
of the chain in place and ducked around
us again. He padded across the Gufistan
rug and stood by the girl. He said:
“This is my wife, fellas.”

I liked the firm thrust of her chin and
the mold of her mouth and nose. She
had clear, wide-set blue eyes that re¬
minded me of my wife, Janet’s. She was
much younger than Devlin, even young¬
er than Janet. I know class and she had
it. She would have had a harder job
concealing her class than her fright. I
liked her in the dinky white-apron-and-
black maid's outfit. Anyway you looked
at her the reaction was pleasant. I
bowed and said: “How do you do, Mrs.
Devlin?”

She nodded very seriously and looked
at her husband.

I’m forty, but Devlin was older than
I am. His mouth twitched and his slim
white hands busied themselves with a
cigarette box. “Cigarette?” he said, and
I helped myself. He was bursting to
talk and I let him. "I called you up be¬
cause I’m in a jam, Duke. A bad jam
that’d be a bum rap even if I could afford
to take it. And I can’t. So that’s why
I called you up.”

I sat on one of the Hepplewhite chairs.
Franny spread himself before the door
but he didn’t take his hat off and he
didn’t take his hands out of his pockets.
I didn’t remind him about the social con¬
ventions. He knew Devlin and I didn’t.
The woman stood by the trunk, holding
for dear life to one of the straps. Her
husband paced up and down, talking
through and around puffs on his ciga¬
rette.

“I been a two-time loser, Duke.
Holmesburg and Eastern. That’s why I
can’t afford to take a rap. That’s why

Eaton K. Goldthwaite

I called you instead of the cops. You
was on the inside once, too, so you know
what it’s all about. And you’re sittin’
right in this man’s town, so you’re the
one I called.”

It’s getting so it doesn’t bother me
when they start that “you, too” stuff.
I said: “What did they get you on?”

“Your trouble, Duke. I couldn't
leave the pretties alone. Maybe you re¬
member the Vandeveer necklace job?
That was my first mistake. It cost me
a stretch at Eastern. I still hadn’t
learned, and they got me cold turkey
breezin’ out of the Bellevue with all of
Anna Martin, the opera singer’s, pearls.
Hell, I got no squawk. They was right
raps. I had ’em cornin’. But this one
isn’t. And I can’t afford to take it.”

I grinned at him. “So you were a box
man. I remember the Martin pearls.
Who caught you?”

“Bill Kurtz. That was eleven years
ago, and he was on his way up.”

Bill Kurtz is a good friend of mine.
“You’ve been straight since you came
out of Holmesburg?” I asked.

The girl let go of the trunk strap.
Her mouth trembled. “He has. Oh, you
must believe me! John has been as
straight as can be! We went to New
York for a fresh start. I don’t have to
tell you how hard it was. We had no
friends. We almost starved, but Johnny
stayed straight. You’ve got to believe
that, Mr. Brian!”

COULD believe any¬
thing she told me,
almost. I couldn’t be¬
lieve that she had
married him when she
was twelve years old.
I asked: “How long
have you been working here?”

“Three months.”

“Who do you work for?”

“Fenwick Green. He’s a swell guy,
Duke.”

There was a picture on the radio. I’d
heard of Fenwick Green. He was a dip¬
py philanthropist who picked bums off

park benches and gave them jobs in
some kind of school he ran. Sometimes
the experiments didn’t turn out so hot,
but I’d never had any of his cases. I
went over and picked up his photograph.
It was pretty good. He was an elderly
man with a rather austere face but con¬
trasting goodhumored eyes. But the
picture didn’t interest me so much as the
frame. The frame was a cheap imitation
of gold and a bad fit.

I asked: “Where is he now?”

“In Florida. He left Camden airport
at four o’clock P.M. That’s why all the
keysters. He was gonna send ’em by
express.”

The girl tossed me a worried look.
“You mustn’t mind Johnny. His lan¬
guage, I mean. It’s only when he’s ter¬
ribly excited that he forgets. Really,
Mr. Brian, all the old Johnny Devlin
is dead.”

I told her I was more interested in
motives than language. I asked him:
“Is this trouble of yours any trouble of
Green’s?”

He said, “No.”

“All right, Johnny. What’s the rap?”

He began to sweat. His eyes stopped
bouncing and sank into a steady, hunted
gleam. He rasped : “You’re gonna help
me?”

“That’s the general idea.”

Johnny Devlin moved. He pushed his
wife away from the tall wardrobe trunk.
He fumbled with the lock. The lock
snapped open and he pried the trunk
apart.

The body of a man tumbled out.

“Studs Gerber!”

I didn’t need Franny’s yell to tell me
who he was. A cheap, small-time porch-
climber that had lately been spending a
lot of somebody’s dough. There was
only one hole, right over his heart, and
it went all the way through. He had
bled plenty. His tweed suit was caked
with it. I went through his pockets and
at the same time noticed that the Gulis-
tan rug was damp and smelled strongly
of soap. Studsy was cold but he hadn’t
started to get stiff yet. That would place

The Frame That Didn’t Fit

the time at anywhere from a couple of
hours before now, which was close to
midnight, to maybe four in the after¬
noon. Johnny Devlin had called the of¬
fice at eight o’clock and Junior Stevens,
my office boy, had had me paged at the
Arena.

Studs Gerber’s pockets had forty-five
dollars, a .25 pearl-handled Spanish
automatic, some trinkets, handkerchiefs
and a handful of business cards. The
cards were advertising The Hollywood
Boulevard Motion Picture School, at
an address on Market Street. I put the
stuff back and looked at the luggage.
There were two gladstones, two short
wardrobes and a tall one, all pigskin and
all labeled Fenwick Green, The Palms,
Miami Beach, Florida. And there was
the tall wardrobe from which Studs Ger¬
ber’s corpse had tumbled. It was black
fiber-covered basswood and bore no
labels.

I said: “Tell me the story.”

OHNNY DEVLIN
applied a fresh ciga¬
rette to a butt. His
wife was sitting in a
chair, with her head
back and eyes closed.
Franny was spread
in front of the door again.

Johnny Devlin said: “Green decides
yesterday to go to Florida. He calls
Knight’s Tour Agency, that’s corner of
Sixteenth an’ Chestnut, an’ they tell him
all the planes are booked solid for a
week. So he stews around all night try-
in’ to make up his mind to take a train.
He gets train sick, and plane sick too,
but he likes the shortest way, see? Well,
this morning he sends me to Broad
Street Station. And when I get there
the ticket agent asks me am I John Dev¬
lin and I say yes and he says to go back
home, that Green has called and changed
his mind.

"So I come back here to the apart¬
ment — this is about noon — and Green
has all this stuff out. He’s just got a
call that there’s a plane cancellation, so

he wants to make it. So I pack a small
bag and get his different pills together
and promise to send the keysters tomor¬
row. I get a taxi and ride with him to
the Camden airport.”

I asked him what time it was when he
arrived at the airport.

He said: “Two o’clock. That may
sound funny, but whenever the boss is
taking a trip he gets to the station way
ahead of time. He goes in the john and
gets sick. Then he’s ready for the trip.
So I stay with him until two thirty and
he says he’s gonna be sick and for me to
go home. So I leave him and get here at
a little after three. Mary was layin’ out
his stuff and I say let it go, that we’d do
it tonight, and let’s go see a movie. She
says swell, because Gone With The
Wind is at the Boyd an’ matinee is pop¬
ular prices. So we go there. Well, it’s
a four-hour show an’ we have supper
afterwards at Spider Kelly’s on Mole
Street. It musta been half-past seven
when we got back to the apartment.”

Johnny Devlin took a long inhale and
crushed the butt in an ash tray. Smoke
filtered from his nostrils and his shuttley
eyes rested a moment on the girl. She
was still sitting with her head back, but
her hands were clenched.

Johnny said: "We came in here. We
was full of the picture and we didn’t
notice the black keyster at first. Mary
saw it first. She said, ‘Where’d that
trunk come from ?’ I said I didn’t know.
So I opened it — ” He paused and raked
sweat from his forehead with his shirt¬
sleeve.

I shook my head at him. I said:
"Johnny, Johnny ! No wonder you were
tripped up on the Martin pearl job.
What a story!”

The girl jumped from the chair and
her eyes blazed at me. “It’s the truth!
In God’s name — ”

“You did a good job cleaning up the
blood. Must’ve taken a lot of scrubbing.”

“The blood come out of the keyster!
It leaked out the bottom ! It was all over
the floor, so help me, Duke!”

I grinned at him. "Listen, Johnny.

Eaton K. Goldthwaite

Your story goes like clockwork up until
you hit GW.T.W. It goes haywire from
there on. In the first place, you can’t
get into that show without reservations.
In the second place, you didn’t eat at
Spider Kelly’s because I was there my¬
self. In the third place, this whole rug
has been taken up and turned around
The worn place that should be near the
steps has been shifted so that it’s under
the trunks. And you’ve burned incense
in here to kill the smell of gunpowder.”

The two of them stared at me. It
would be hard to decide which was more
frightened. They both said: “You —
you don’t believe us?”

“No.”

Mary Devlin got up then and walked
to the radio. She clasped her hands.
When she turned around her eyes were
up and her chin was steady. She said:
“Tell him the truth, Johnny.”

Johnny Devlin acted like he had been
smacked with a blackjack. He sighed.
“O.K., Mary,” he said. He walked to
a console and poured himself a stiff
drink. “Want one?” he asked me I
shook my head. "O.K.,” he said and
tossed it in him. His hands didn’t shake
quite so much. He grunted,

“This sounds screwier than the other,
Duke, but God help me it’s the truth!
When I came back from the airport we
started packin’ Mr. Green’s bags. When
we were gettin’ the bags out Mary had
noticed that our trunk was gettin’
mildewed. I keep my army uniform and
a few trinkets in there, and the uniform
was full of moth eggs. So she was gonna
give ’em a airing. Well, I was packin’
and Mary was gettin’ supper. She was
in the kitchen when somebody knocked
on the door. I went to it. It’s this guy.
I says, ‘Yes, sir?’ and he pulls back his
coat like he’s flashing a badge. ‘In¬
spector,’ he says. ‘Got a complaint that
your radio makes too much noise.’ And
I tell him that’s impossible because the
apartments are all soundproofed. So he
pulls a gat and sticks it in my belly and
says, ‘Good! Then nobody’ll hear me
if you decide to get tough.’

“So I had to let him in. ‘Where does
he keep ’em?’ he says. ‘What?’ I asks
him, and then Mary comes in out of the
kitchen. She is standin’ by that door,
there. I’m over here, an’ he is right
where Franny is, a little nearer maybe.
‘One yip and you get it,’ he says to
Mary.

“Then I heard the door. Just a little
rattle. I hadn’t had a chance to replace
the chain. This guy heard it too. He
whirled around and as he did, somebody
fired through the door. He staggers
back an’ down the steps without even
pullin’ his own trigger. I stood for a
minute an’ Mary yelled at me ‘Quick!
For God’s sake see who that was !’ So I
went. I didn’t figure maybe I would get
shot too. I just went. There was nobody
in the hall. I came back in.”

I looked at him and for the first time
I noticed the little Purple Heart in his
lapel.

I looked at her. Her face was pale
and scared. I said: “So that’s the
story.”

They said that was the story.

RANNY and I stuck
around a while. I hated
to do it, but I made
them go through all the
\ motions again, all but
putting the stiff in the
3 trunk.

Johnny Devlin said to me: “What
would you do if you was in my shoes?
I figured on shippin’ the trunk to Walla
Walla but Mary stopped me. She said
it would be no use. She said they’d trace
it and us, and then we’d be in a worse
jam. So I called you.”

I told him that was probably the first
smart thing he’d ever done outside of
going straight. I asked him if he had
any money. Mary answered by pulling
out a savings-bank passbook showing a
balance of a hundred and twenty-eight
dollars. She said she’d get me all of it
if I needed it. To change the subject I
asked Johnny what the Purple Heart
was for, and she spoke up in a proud

The Frame That Didn’t Fit

voice: “That means he was wounded in
the War, Mr. Brian.”

I knew it. I asked : “All right, where
does Mr. Green keep them?”

“Them? Whaddaya mean?”

“What Studsy was looking for.”

Johnny Devlin and his wife looked at
each other. “I don’t know about this,”
he said slowly.

She settled it. She walked to the Cur¬
rier & Ives and pulled it back. It cov¬
ered a Mosler wall safe.

I nudged Johnny. “All right, open it
up.”

She moved between us and the safe.
She looked at me very steadily. She
said: “Don’t ask him to do that, Mr.
Brian. That’s something he hasn’t done
in eleven years.”

I shrugged my shoulders. I have my
fine points too, but there wasn’t any
murder rap hanging over my head. I
went to work on the safe. I had plenty
of trouble with it — my hand isn’t what
it used to be — but I got it open. It was
empty, but I didn’t let Johnny Devlin
see it. I whistled and slammed it shut in
a hurry. I said : "O.K. Now we’ll call
Bill Kurtz.”

Mary Devlin’s lips got trembly and
her eyes started to fill up. “You — you
mean the Kurtz of the Homicide Bu¬
reau?”

“None other.”

“Is it — is it necessary?”

“You bet your sweet life it’s neces¬
sary,” I told her, and Franny broke his
record silence to chuckle.

Tl/fY HOUSE is one of those old ones
-L’-*- on Spruce Street, and every morn¬
ing at seven there’s one particular truck
that goes by and shakes the dishes in
the corner closet so hard it wakes me.
But it didn’t this morning. I had been
up since five, and I got a good look at
it. It was a D.S.C. Mack, Number 78,
and I decided to call Bill Kurtz and see
if he couldn’t get the mayor to have the
truck run down Pine Street instead of
Spruce. But Franny arrived, and since
Janet was still asleep I took him down-

cellar and gave him his instructions.

I said: “You’re to go to Camden Air¬
port, Broad Street Station and Knight’s
Agency — to check Johnny’s story.”

He screwed his ugly mug into a look
of something like intelligence and said,
“Check!”

“Then you’re to go to Belvedere
Towers and find out if anybody heard
a shot at six o’clock,” which was the
time I’d finally pinned Johnny down to.

"Check !”

“And get the names and all informa¬
tion possible on apartments rented in the
past few weeks, or months.”

Franny objected. “ ’At’s kinda silly,
ain’t it? Bill Kurtz’ll have all ’at stuff.”

I told him he might have been a good
bootlegger once but he was a lousy de¬
tective now. He grinned at me. He
said: “How about ’at cute dame, Mary?
Dontcha want me to ast her a few ques¬
tions?”

“I do not. She’s probably a Mrs. just
to discourage guys like you. And don’t
get involved with any other dames,
either. Now, scram!”

He went. Franny was really a good
egg. I often wondered how he put up
with me. We met in Trenton Pen. It
was the only sentence I ever served de¬
spite the fact I had operated in Berlin,
Paris, London and a lot of foreign cities
where the police used to look down on
American law-enforcement bodies as
kindergartens. Franny swears he took
a jail .sentence to get out of the booze
racket. I got mine in the Rittenberg
diamond job in an Atlantic City Board¬
walk hotel. And I was glad it was over.
If it hadn’t been for Trenton I wouldn’t
have met Janet. She was the “Society
Girl Social Worker” who snapped me
out of it. We made good newspaper
copy for a while. I’m glad that’s over
too.

I didn’t like some of the things Fran¬
ny told me about Johnny Devlin.
Franny remembered him as a kid in
North Philly. Devlin was a wizard with
a pool cue, and being about five years
older, all the kids thought he was head

Eaton K. Goldthwaite

man. Franny said he used to be hand¬
some then. A school teacher fell for him
and ran away with him. Franny thought
they’d had a kid — he wasn’t sure. But
Johnny Devlin was caught in the draft,
so if he did have a kid it must have been
while he was overseas. Johnny might be
trying to go straight since Fenwick
Green picked him up, but he didn’t have
such good companions. Franny told me
positively he had seen Johnny shooting
pool with Studs Gerber at the Monarch.
If it hadn’t been that I had instinctive
faith in Mary Devlin I’d have let Bill
Kurtz take charge in his own way.

Kurtz hadn’t been to bed yet when I
arrived at the Hall.

I said : “Bill, do me a favor. Let the
Devlins be bailed.”

ILL’S a big, rugged guy.
He looks more like a
farmer than a blood¬
hound. That’s why so
many mugs find them¬
selves out on a limb
with him. We haven’t
any secrets and he’s never used any
varnish with me. His eyes explored my
insides from cerebrum to intestines. He
growled: “What’re you trying to do,
kid me ? Johnny shot Studsy in an argu¬
ment over who was going to cut who in
on the Knapp robbery at Chestnut Hill.
The Knapp housemaid just left here.
She showed up by herself this morning
and picked Johnny out of the lineup.”

That was news to me but I didn’t
show it. I said : “Johnny may be a bad
boy, but his wife is O.K. And the house¬
maid might be wrong.”

“Yeah. So might you, Duke. I don’t
go for this wife stuff. In the first place,
no law can make ’em testify. And may¬
be you remember we’ve had a string of
house robberies in the past year without
a break until the watchman at the Strat¬
ford surprised Icebox Sam Furman and
put a slug through him. And there were
no more robberies until Furman's gang,
which included Studsy Gerber, picked
up Johnny Devlin. So?”

“Listen, Bill. Let ’em get bailed. In
the meantime, rig a camera opposite
Fenwick Green’s wall safe. I let Johnny
think it was crammed with valuables. If
he wants to lam he’ll try to crack it and
you’ll get a picture. If he’s straight, you

Bill liked the idea. “Maybe you got
something there, Duke. I need some
evidence. So far we haven’t found the
slug that killed Studsy, and we haven’t
found a gun.”

Bill was in good humor when I left
him. I promised to make him one of
my Welsh rabbits and he promised to
stop around and see Janet. I went to a
drug store and called the house.

Janet sounded sleepy. She said,
“Yes?”

“Darling, how would you like to go
in the movies?”

“How would I — Say, who is this?”

I went red. “Who the devil do you
think would be calling you ‘darling’?”

"Oh. That’s better. Now you sound
natural. I thought you said something
about going in the movies. Silly!”

I told her there was nothing silly about
it. I gave her the address of the Holly¬
wood Boulevard Movie School and told
her to go there. She said she would aft¬
er I’d agreed to finance it. She has
money of her own, but she’s funny about
some things.

Back at the Belvedere again I asked
myself a question. If I wanted to buy a
picture frame in a hurry, I asked, where
would I go? I got the answer and went
there. It was a little hole-in-the-wall
near the University. A doddery old guy
came out of the back. He asked : “What
can I.do for you ?”

I told him, “You have some beautiful
frames here. It’s hard to imagine any¬
one buying one of these things,” and I
picked up a gold imitation just like the
one Fenwick Green’s picture had been
in “when they could have something like
that sterling-silver one.”

His face lighted up like a Christmas
tree. “It’s the price, mister. Only last
night a young woman rushed in here.

The Frame That Didn’t Fit

She was a lady. I know because I serve
lots of ladies. She had a hammered gold
frame that looked like somebody had
tried to pound a pebble through one side
of it. I told her it could be repaired but
it would take time. She said she was in
a hurry. She picked up one like you got
in your hand and said, ‘How much ?’ and
I said, ‘A quarter!’ so she bought it.
She’d said she was in a hurry but she
waited for change from three dimes.
And she wouldn’t leave the damaged
frame — ”

I said they weren’t so bad at that. I
bought one for myself, laying down the
exact amount. He was staring at me
when I left.

There was a call from Franny when
I arrived at the office. Junior Stevens
had taken it. Some day I’m going to
give that kid a haircut. He kept push¬
ing his hair back and saying that Franny
had called from Camden Airport. Fran¬
ny had been very excited. He had been
so excited it was hard to understand him,
what with the airplanes roaring around
and everything —

“What in hell did he say?”

Junior swallowed. “Franny said to
tell you that somebody named Green
didn’t take the plane for someplace. He
said nobody saw Mr. Green after he
went in the bathroom — ”

I WAS plenty bothered when I hit
Arch Street, but not too bothered to
notice a cab pull out right after mine.
“Turn down Sixth,” I told my driver.
We turned and the cab behind us
turned. “Go up Market,” I yelled. We
swung right on red and headed for City
Hall. At Reading Terminal, when a
light stopped us, the other cab was two
behind. “Swing up Thirteenth,” I told
my driver. When we reached the bus
station I shoved a dollar bill in his face
and jumped out.

Inside the station the starter was yell¬
ing the names of a lot of small Jersey
towns and that the Atlantic City bus
was leaving on Track One. I charged
through. The bus had started and the

driver glared at me. I shook my head.
I ran in front of him into Filbert Street.
A lone cab was in the stand and I
climbed aboard.

The bus had passed into Filbert just
as my cab got under way. A guy burst
from the doors of the bus terminal and
hopped around in the middle of the
street. I knew him. He was Dago Frank
Nunally, one of the old Furman mob.

“Where to?” my driver asked, and
when I told him Chestnut Hill he
grinned. I guess five-dollar fares are
getting to be scarce.

fT'HE Knapp Mansion was immense
but it looked seedy. There was a
sizable For Sale sign on the lawn, with
the name of some bank as trustee. I get
around in society, but that’s when I’m
not working, so I went to the back door.
I leaned on the button for quite a while
until I tumbled that it was out of com¬
mission. After the third or fourth knock
a little old lady came to the door.

She was no more than five feet high.
She had white hair and nice quiet eyes
and one of those black velvet chokers
around her neck. She had a nice voice.
She said: “Well, young man, what do
you want?”

“I want to talk to your housemaid,” I
told her.

“Housemaid?” She backed up a little
and gave me a peculiar look.

“Sure. The one who witnessed the
jewel robbery,” and I showed her my
badge.

The old girl hesitated. “Oh, that one !
Well, we — She was hired from an
agency. You see, my grand-daughter
gave a party to entertain some friends.
The maid was in only for the night and
the following morning.”

I wondered if Bill Kurtz knew about
this. I said: “Is that so?”

She fidgeted with the door handle. She
seemed to want to talk and I smiled. She
opened right up. “You see, my grand¬
daughter has had a chance to go on the
stage. She wanted to impress Mr.
Brown, the promoter, so we — Since the

baton K.. Goldthwaite

bank failed and my son died, things
haven’t been so — We wanted to help
her and we gave a party. A lot of stage
people, actors and like that, attended. It
was while the party was in progress that
the maid came screaming downstairs
about the robbery. It was really nothing,
just a few trinkets, but Gwendolyn, my
grand-daughter, thought we should call
the police. And they made quite a fuss
about it, too.”

So all they had against Johnny Dev¬
lin was the say-so of a floating domestic
who had turned up by herself the morn¬
ing after he was booked in the Gerber
killing.

I said: “That’s because there have
been a great many unsolved jewel rob¬
beries. The police are trying very hard
to catch the criminals.”

“It was exciting, seeing our names in
the paper again after so many years. But
it made Gwendolyn quite angry. It
seems that the men at the school thought
the publicity might hurt her career.”

“The school? What school?”

“The Hollywood Boulevard School.
It’s — let me see, now — ”

I didn’t wait for her to remember.

RANNY and I met
in the lobby of the
Belvedere Towers. I
glared. “What’s all
this rumble-bumble
about Fenwick Green
getting flushed down
the plumbing at Central Airport?”

“No kiddin’, Duke. Honestagod, no¬
body seen him after he went one way
to the can an’ Johnny went th’other to
the Boulevard.”

“Who saw him last?”

“The Admiral. You know, the guy
that sells tickets an’ answers questions.”

“Did Devlin’s story hold together at
the other places?”

“Like the Union, Duke.”

Franny’s information showed that
only four new tenants had taken apart¬
ments at the Belvedere during the past
three months. Most promising of these

was also the most recent, a Mr. Dalby
who didn’t seem to receive many visitors
or spend much time at home. He had
rented E-24, which would make it the
next floor above Fenwick Green’s.

I asked him if anybody’d heard any
shots. He said nobody’d heard any shots.
I told him that Green had an office
downtown somewhere and for him to
use his own judgment. He hit me for a
ten-spot, got a five, and the way he
grinned I’ll bet he’d have settled for a
deuce.

I went up to E in the self-service ele¬
vator and didn’t make any more noise
than necessary. Franny had somehow
mesmerized the manager into producing
a passkey and I used it. Inside was a
little foyer, like at Fenwick Green’s. Be¬
yond was another door which was also
closed. I started thinking up some cock-
and-bull story to tell Mr. Dalby if he
should be home, and I opened the door
— not far, but far enough.

Old Fenwick Green was in shirt¬
sleeves and looking mighty sour, perched
on a day bed. In front of him, playing
cards at a table, were Dago Frank Nu-
nally and Benny-The-Barber Murano.
They both wore shoulder-harnesses and
the harnesses had guns in them. Old
Green saw the door open and he saw
me and he jumped up and yelled “Hey !”
like I might be the Seventh Regiment
Cavalry.

I slammed the door quick and jumped
sideways and at about the same time a
half-dozen slugs smacked the door and
let daylight through. I pulled out my
rod and gave them back a couple and
then I ducked through the foyer into the
hall.

That’s an awful long hall to try to run
down with somebody throwing slugs at
you. Belvedere Towers might have been
soundproofed but I wasn’t. I let out a
yell and squeezed myself against the
wall. The door to E-24 yanked open and
Benny-the-Barber stuck his kisser and
his gat around the corner at the same
time. A slug whistled past my ear and
I let him have it. His face went back in

The Frame That Didn’t Fit

but his hand stayed on the door jamb
and I liked the looks of the slow down¬
ward slide it started. The elevator door
clanged and Mack Johnson and another
harness bull charged out. Dago Frank
put one slug through my hat and he’d
have nailed me with the next one if Mack
hadn’t beat him to it. Quick and cool,
police style. The door to the foyer was
blocked open with a lot of bloody mess
and a thin, scared, “For Heaven’s
sakes!” came out. I told Mack that it
was Fenwick Green and for the harness
bull to hold the tear-gas until we had a
little talk.

DOWN at headquarters Fenwick
Green told us his story. It seems
he went into the can at Central Airport,
just as Johnny Devlin said, and he got
sick. He had a long technical word for
it which Bill Kurtz copied down very
carefully. Then, after he was sick he felt
he needed some air. So he went outside,
and after he’d wiped his glasses he felt
better. He started walking over toward
the hangars and a taxi came alongside of
him. He claims somebody jumped out
and said that Johnny had been badly
hurt in a crash and was in West Jersey
or Cooper Hospital — he couldn’t re¬
member which they said. So he climbed
into the cab and the next thing he knew
a guy jams a rod in his ribs and another
takes off his glasses and puts adhesive
tape on his eyes. He showed, all right,
that he’d been peeled somewhat roughly
around the temples.

“Did you know where you were?”
was the first question Bill Kurtz asked
him.

“Well, I, ah — No, not exactly. I
thought the room was similar to my own,
but I couldn’t be sure.”

“Did you see anybody besides Nu-
nally and Murano?”

“No. Not a soul. It was awful — ”
“Did they ask you to do anything ?
To write anything or get in touch with
anyone?”

Fenwick Green showed some resent¬
ment. “They told me to keep my mouth

shut. They seemed to want the combi¬
nation to my office safe, but I told them
they were foolish. There’s nothing of
value in it.”

Bill Kurtz looked puzzled, and I
didn’t blame him. He growled: “Sure
that’s all they wanted?”

“Ah — yes. They seemed to be wait¬
ing for instructions of some kind. They
were quite apprehensive. I’m sure, Lieu¬
tenant, that the men are mentally ill. I
have no desire that they be punished. If
I could just talk to them — ”

“Nobody’s gonna talk to them now.”

“But I do not understand. Perhaps
you don’t know who I am — ”

“I know you right enough. But
they’re dead.”

The police surgeon had to go to work
on the old boy with smelling salts then.
Everything was in an uproar. Bill got
me aside. He said : “This is the dizziest
snatch I ever saw. They take the guy
right back to his own apartment house.
What do you make of it?”

“They might be awful dumb or they
might be awful smart, but they’re dead
and we’ll never know. Studs Gerber
might have been trying to make contact
when he was knocked off.”

“Yeah. He might. But do you know,
Duke, I got a hunch that Mary Devlin
is telling a straight story.”

I grinned at him. “Oh, so you’re be¬
ginning to fall too, are you? Did you
get any pictures?”

Bill stared at me. “Pictures? I’d
forgotten I installed that damned thing!
Let’s take a run up there.”

We rode in his car back to the Belve¬
dere Towers. A harness bull was on the
steps and a mob was milling around. We
created a mild sensation. Somebody
yelled: “Look! There’s Duke Brian!”
A reporter stuck a flashgun in my face.
I can remember when I got a kick out
of that sort of thing.

Bill told me the Devlins had been
bailed and he’d left orders for the boys
to stay away from the apartment. He
said Mack Johnson just happened to be
in the building checking leads, which

Eaton K. Goldthwaite

was lucky for me. Another five minutes
and it would have been Mack’s party, or
my funeral.

As we entered the apartment, Bill
said : "This outfit is supposed to be fool¬
proof. A selenium cell trips the shutter
when the light-ray is broken. In other
words, you could be living in the room
and walking around, but you’d have to
go to that safe to get your picture taken.
It’s pretty clever. ... I hope it works.”

The place looked about the same ex¬
cept that the trunks and bags had been
removed. While Bill was walking
through the rooms I had another chance
to inspect Fenwick Green’s picture.
Where it was, on top of the radio, was
just about the height from the floor that
Studsy’s bullet hole had been. That gave
me an idea and I looked at the plaster
behind the radio. There was a little dent,
like the corner of the picture might have
hit it. I began to ask myself what kind
of a bullet would have gone clean
through Studsy, dented a gold frame and
knocked it against the plaster.

From down the hall Bill’s voice hol¬
lered: "This is some apartment! Mrs.
Devlin even had her own room!”

Mrs. Devlin, my eye, I told myself.
“What about the picture?” I called.

Bill was excited when he came back.
“We got one,” he yelled. “It worked!
As soon as I get to a darkroom, we’ll
start to untangle this thing.”

I said: “Wouldn’t I laugh if you had
one of your flat-foot understudies on
super-pan’ ?”

T’D TOLD Janet to meet me for lunch
at Spider Kelly’s, and Franny
showed up too. I stared at Janet. She
didn’t look natural to me, the way she
walked and held her head. And there
was cosmetic, a lot of it, around her eyes.

“I’m to have a screen test,” she said
importantly.

“A what?”

“A screen test. Ya-as, they seem to
think that I’m the new type they need.
Mr. B-own said — ”

“When’s this test gonna be, Garbo?”

“Don’t be rude, darling. And don’t
get any cute ideas. It’s all perfectly
proper. The man is to come to Papa’s
tomorrow afternoon. He’s to make one
picture of me coming down the staircase,
another in the library — ”

“You mean some guy is going to make
movies of you in your father’s house?”

“Of course, dear. Don’t shout. I can
hear perfectly. They wanted a back¬
ground I’m familiar with, so as to give
me confidence. They — ”

“What’s the matter with my house?”
I yelled but she went on talking.

“You don’t have to be such a horrid
grouch. There are oodles of girls I
know that have been tested and failed.
Peg Paterson, Anne — ”

Something clicked in my mind. Gwen¬
dolyn Knapp — What a scheme to case
layouts! They’d have pictures of the
interiors of the best houses. Stairs, fur¬
niture, obstacles, entrances, exits —

I ignored Janet. I said to Franny:
“What did you get at Green’s office?”

“They was nobody home. So I used
the old sleight o’ hand. Just a office,
that’s all. There was nothin’ in the safe.
This guy Green must be a archyteck.
His files was full o’ house plans — ”

I went out of Spider Kelly’s like I had
been given a hot-foot. I suppose I had
been rude to Janet, and Franny probably
would have been stuck with the check.
She came after me yelling at the top of
her lungs, with Franny behind her. I
hopped a cab. It’s a funny thing how an
otherwise intelligent woman can nurse
in her heart the idea of out-Crawfording
Crawford.

ILL KURTZ’ office
was jammed. Mack
Johnson, Johnny Dev¬
lin and his wife, some
guy that looked like a
lawyer, Fenwick
Green, a guy that had
on plus-fours and looked like a cartoon¬
ist’s idea of a movie director. When
Janet and Franny burst in the place was
a bedlam.

The Frame That Didn’t Fit

“Shut upl” Bill Kurtz yelled, and
everybody shut up but me.

I said : “You’ve had twenty-three rob¬
beries of homes of socialites in the past
six months. None of ’em solved. The
closest you came to a solution was find¬
ing Icebox Sam Furman after the watch¬
man shot him. Right?”

Bill yelled: “What’re you trying to
do, embarrass me? Shut up!”

I didn’t. I said: “Furman was one of
the slickest boxmen in the country, and
when he got his, the gang had to have a
new one. Right?”

Bill growled something. I didn’t look
at him. I was looking at Johnny Devlin
and he was looking at me. I said : “One
thing about those jobs, they were all
perfectly cased. There was a brain run¬
ning the show. Now the brain needed a
new boxman so he tried to frame Johnny
Devlin. He planted a perjured identifi¬
cation in a phony robbery at the Knapp’s
Chestnut Hill place. He sent Studsy
Gerber with it to make Johnny Devlin
come to terms.”

Bill started to listen. Somebody had
come in and handed him a photograph
that was still wet. He didn’t look at it.
He probably knew what it was.

I said: “In the meantime, Fenwick
Green gets himself snatched. Now, there
are two ways of looking at this thing.
Either Dago Frank was running the
show and he snatched Green to force
Johnny back into crime, or Fenwick
Green was running the show and he had
himself snatched — ”

Fenwick Green began to holler bloody
murder. Mack Johnson, who is by no
means dumb, slipped over to me and
whispered : “What’s the combo to
Green’s wall safe?” I told him and he
slipped out of the room.

Green had quieted down a bit and I
went on. “Or Green got himself
snatched to get himself out of the way.
If you look at it from that angle, Green
had given Johnny a job figuring that he
could use him sooner or later. But he
hadn’t figured on Mary. Mary was
keeping Johnny straight and she thought

Fenwick Green was God because he had
given them jobs. And because Green
knew Mary would go to the cops, or to
the chair if necessary, to keep Johnny
straight, he had to keep himself out of
the picture, because it’s one thing to
frame a two-time loser, and it’s another
thing to have to deal with his daughter. ”

Fenwick Green started to holler that
he was being framed, that he had been
snatched.

Bill Kurtz stuck the photo in his face.
He snapped: “If you were snatched,
how come you had time out to get your
picture taken, Mr. Green?”

Fenwick Green moaned and went into
a faint again. Mack Johnson came back
in. He had a hungry look in his eyes.
He put his hand in the back pocket
where he doesn’t keep his handkerchief
and looked at Fenwick Green. He said
to Bill Kurtz : “Davidowsky just opened
this guy’s wall safe. He found some of
the ice from the Sarah Newell job, and
a few of the rubies from the Paterson
job.”

Bill yelled at Green : “Why’d you kill
Studsy Gerber?”

Fenwick Green said he was willing to
admit he’d run the movie school to case
robberies but he never killed anybody.

Bill Kurtz isn’t so dumb. I knew he
knew that Fenwick Green hadn’t
bumped Studsy. And I knew he knew
he’d have a hell of a job pinning it on
Mary without the gun or the bullet that
did the job. And he knew no jury in
America would convict a brave kid for
killing a rat to keep her father straight.
Maybe some day I’ll tell him about the
picture I got while he was looking at his
selenium camera. The picture of a scared
girl dragging an old army rifle out of
a trunk. A rifle like her dad had lugged
around France while she was hanging
onto her mother’s skirts. Bill Kurtz
wouldn’t have known about the rifle. It
was probably in the mud at the bottom
of the Schuylkill River, not far from a
bullet-riddled frame that really fit Fen¬
wick Green. No. Bill wouldn’t have
known about that. Or would he?

BEHIND THE

BLACK

E HAD hoped to re¬
produce a photograph
of Flashgun Casey —
in the flesh, believe it
or not — on this page.
Our sprightly contem¬
porary, LIFE, a cou¬
ple of months ago, ran at the head of its
cameramen’s credit column a pen-and-
ink caricature of News Photographer
Stedman Jones whose nickname among
his confreres is Flash Gun (LIFE’S
own spelling) Casey, “because of his
resemblance to the famous fiction char¬
acter. ”

BLACK MASK promptly called
LIFE to ask if they had in their files a
snapshot of Casey-Jones (pun intended)
which we could turn over to Pete Kuh-
loff, our black-and-white illustrator, to
use for a model — Jones is somewhere in
Europe where all news-minded camera¬
men would like to be these days — and to
reproduce Behind the Black Mask so
you Casey and Coxe fans can see what
he really looks like. The young lady to
whom we talked at LIFE reported that
she had dug up a snap of “Sted” Jones
but that the “man who could decide
whether it could be released for such
purposes” was out to lunch. If he comes
94

MASK

back before this issue goes to press and
says O.K. maybe we can still squeeze it
in. Otherwise we’ll try to run it at some
future time for there’ll be more Casey
yarns coming along from time to time
and the Flash’s name won’t grow dim no
matter how long it takes to obtain a like¬
ness of Jones.

THE first issue of the new BLACK
MASK under the Fictioneers im¬
print went on sale April 19th — at least
that was the date it was scheduled to hit
the stands! Our first fan letter — dated
the I7th — arrived at our desk the morn¬
ing of the 18th and said, in part —

I have noticed that BLACK MASK
has been taken over by your company. I
bought the June issue yesterday and will
say that it does not seem to have been hurt
by the change. The new price of 15c is
welcome, too. . . .

A lightning critique indeed, seeming
to indicate that its author managed to
procure an issue a couple of days ahead
of time and must have got right at it
We hope all our readers are as avid
“firsters” and that such words of con¬
fidence and encouragement will con¬
tinue to come to us from time to time.

RATS

BREED

RATS

Hango’s half-pint kid came tearing in.

By C. T. FLEMING -ROBERTS

In which a tough cop and a sentimental newshound gamble against death
with the soul of a killer’s kid for table-stakes.

OBODY knew better
than Detective Ser¬
geant Bill Teed him¬
self how he got all the
breaks in the capture
of Benny Hango. In
the first place he just
happened to be watching a group of boys
pitch pennies in front of the Alpha Cafe
that night. He was interested in the sport
because down in the detectives’ room at
headquarters he was no mean penny-
pitcher himself. He was watching these

kids when Pop Walker appeared at the
screen door of the Alpha and said to
Bill Teed : “You are pretty smart, aren’t
you ?”

Teed couldn’t answer that question
himself, so he followed Pop Walker
back into the cafe. Pop had a big Alpha
Cafe napkin tucked under the latest ac¬
quisition in his collection of chins, and
the creases at the corners of his mouth
held evidence of dinner. It was said
that Pop Walker was digging his grave
with his teeth, which was not strictly

G. T. Fleming-Roberts

true because the teeth he used were
false. Pop Walker asked Bill to have a
cup of coffee with him.

This Pop Walker had been police re¬
porter on the Courier for twenty-odd
years and he sometimes scooped the
police as well as his rivals. Also, he was
no one to hand out undeserved orchids.
He had implied that Teed was smart at
a time when Teed was feeling anything
else but. Teed had been looking for and
not finding this Benny Hango who was
wanted for the murder of a teller in a
bank stick-up that had occurred two days
before. That Pop Walker had said Bill
was smart when Bill didn’t know what
he had done that was smart, was no
better than being utterly dumb.

“Why,” Pop said, adding sugar to
his coffee until heaven help the dish¬
washer who had to clean out his cup,
“you’re smart to be watching Benny
Hango’s son.”

The fact that Benny Hango had a son
had either escaped the police record or
was considered of no importance to de¬
tectives. Teed had never heard of Benny
Hango’s son. All he had to go on was
that the D. A. had a witness who would
identify Benny Hango as one of the
stick-up men and the murderer of the
bank teller. But Pop Walker knew about
Hango’s kid. In fact, he said, the kid
was out in front now pitching pennies.

T OOKING out the cafe window, any-
body who had ever seen Benny
Hango could pick out his kid from the
others. The kid was maybe fifteen years
old, but looked older in the face and
younger in the body. He was slope¬
shouldered, skinny, undersize. He had
his dad’s thin, angular nose, his dad’s
glossy black hair, his dad’s close-set dark
eyes. His mouth, though, was a finer
thing than his dad’s.

Teed turned from the window
thoughtfully pulling his chin, which was
a good deal longer than all of Pop’s
facial terrace. “Pop, why in the deep
dark hell have you been keeping this
under your toupee ?” He thought, damn

it, if this was anybody else but Pop you
could call it withholding material evi¬
dence.

Pop’s short brow got worried with
wrinkles. “Well,” he said slowly, “I
like kids. I been watching this kid of
Benny Hango’s for several hours, What
I intended to do was see if he’d lead me
to Benny’s hangout, and then I could
report the hangout to the police and just
leave the kid out of it. You know how
I’ve always wished I had a son.”

“Yeah,” Bill admitted. He got up
to go to the door, but Pop got hold of his
coat-tail. “You wait,” Pop said. His
face was wrinkled up as though he had
been eating green apples. “There’s no
use pulling up a weed if another grows
right up in its place. Isn’t that true?”

“Yeah, but — ”

“There’s good in that kid, Bill. But
if he gets in dutch with the cops right
about now, he’ll grow up hating cops.
And that’s a good way to get off on the
wrong foot — hating cops.”

"I’ll buy the kid a lolly-pop,” Bill
said.

Pop said: “You just think of Hango’s
kid as though he were your own. You
give him a break and keep him out of it
entirely. That kid ought to have his
chance. You’re going to fry his old man
for murder, don’t forget, and if you
approach the kid with your usual night¬
stick diplomacy the kid will get the im¬
pression that his dad is a martyr.”

Bill Teed spread his hands. “O. K.
I said I’ll go easy on the kid. I’ll even
hand him over to you and you can cuddle
him to your bosom if you want to. Only
I got to get Benny Hango or my own
kids will be provided for by a relief
ticket.”

He jerked out of Pop’s grasp and
went out to look the kids over. The
more he saw of Benny Hango’s kid the
more he saw of Benny Hango. The kid
was just a miniature of his old man. At
the penny-pitching, Hango’s kid had
been winning steadily, so there was no
complaint from the other boys when he
pulled out of the game.

Rats Breed Rats

EED followed the kid,
watched him visit a
serve-self grocery
where he bought bread
and milk with pennies
he had won and stole
some cookies. From
there, the kid went to the basement en¬
trance of a deserted building that walled
in one end of a parking-lot. Teed fol¬
lowed along and eventually located the
kid and Benny Hango in the furnace-
room of the building, and through the
door of the fuel cellar, where Teed was
hiding, he could hear the two talking.

Teed approached the door. What he
heard gave him the idea that Hango was
wounded. And that was his second
break.

“Lemme take your rod and get a doc
for you,” the kid was saying. His voice
was just like his dad’s except that it was
an octave higher.

“I’m O. K.,” Hango said. “You help
me outta here tonight and I’ll get some
of the dough and blow. You been a damn
good kid, Joey.”

“But the bulls — ”

“The hell with them,” Hango said.
“What did I do in the Peoria job? It’s
a sweet set-up, in Peoria. The joint is
cased. We go in, clean out the cages.
Coming out, what happens? Right in
front of me is a cop. I give it to him in
the belly.”

At this point, Bill Teed pulled his
revolver and shoved open the door.
Benny Hango, dark, dried-up little stick
of dynamite that he was, lay on a bed
made of burlap sacks. His right trouser
leg was slit and his leg was bandaged
above the knee with rags. His gun was
on an up-ended orange crate about three
feet from him. Joey was on the other
side of the orange crate and a little to
the left. A candle was stuck in the
regulator chain of the furnace, and that
was the only light there was. The open
bottle of milk was beside Benny, and
he had a chunk of the bread in his hand.

Bill Teed couldn’t be seen easily be¬
cause he was at the edge of the circle of

candle-light. If it hadn’t been for the
kid, it would have been a cinch. “Put
up your hands, Benny,” he said. “Try
anything and you’ll get what the Peoria
cop got. You’re under arrest.” He ad¬
vanced to the edge of the circle of light
and a little beyond.

Hango’s kid said: “A dirty copper!”
He looked from Teed to his dad as
though he expected Hango to make a
super-move. Benny looked at his gun
and evidently couldn’t decide on a super¬
move. Hango’s kid couldn’t quite under¬
stand this. He repeated, tossing in a
few more adjectives, that here was a
dirty copper.

Benny Hango sat up slowly and raised
his hands. His hard eyes flickered into
the candle-light. And then Benny’s kid
pulled the surprise. He came up from
a squat to a standing position and Bill
thought the kid was going to try and
reach Hango’s gun. Bill took a quick
step forward and got the kid by the
hair. Joey Hango simply stuck out his
foot and pushed the orange crate over
toward his dad.

The gun went with the orange crate,
and Benny took it out of midair as it
fell. He brought the gun around toward
Bill Teed. Bill Teed was a hard man to
gun because he was thin and fast and
kept his nerves in cold storage. Besides,
he had a wide" edge on Hango. Bill got
in the first and last shot and it took
Hango through the right arm. Hango
dropped his gun, and his face crimped
with pain.

Bill Teed came down with both knees
into Hango’s middle, drove the killer’s
breath out of him. He got out handcuffs.
Hango’s half-pint kid came tearing in,
his thin arms going like windmills, his
lips naming the cop. Bill flicked the kid
a glance, saw the wild, berserk gleam in
his eyes. He warned, “Keep out, kid,”
then grunted explosively as the kid’s
dad landed a short blow to his middle.

Bill Teed slapped his gun barrel to
the side of Hango’s head to stun him
while he got the handcuffs on. Joey
shrilled : “You leave my old man alone !”

G. T. Fleming-Roberts

He beat both fists into the small of
Teed’s back. Teed brought his right
elbow back sharply and the point of it
cracked to the kid’s chin. The kid went
flat, and the crack of his head against
the floor had more to do with keeping
him quiet than the blow. Bill brought
the dazed Hango’s. wrists together and
clamped the cuffs in place.

Teed stood up, turned around, looked
at Joey. He said: “It’s tough, kid.”
Joey didn’t say anything. His dark
eyes were glassy, his teeth ground to¬
gether. The kid was dazed but he was
coming out of it.

Teed heard the popping of coal par¬
ticles under foot, looked up, saw Pop
Walker coming through the door. “I
called headquarters,” he said, “as soon
as I saw where you were going. There’ll
be a wagon for Hango. I’ll take the kid
with me.”

Joey Hango sat up. He said shrilly:
“I’m going with my old man.”

Teed shook his head. “You won’t
like it there. We’re giving you a break.
Haven’t you got enough sense to take
it?” He went over to Benny Hango,
grabbed him by the handcuffs. “You
get up on your feet, Benny. If you were
planning to lam out of here tonight I
guess you can walk as far as the police
car.”

Hango got to his feet. Sweat stood out
on his thin, ugly face. He took one step
with Teed and stopped. He hitched
himself around so he could divide what
he was going to give out between Teed
and Pop Walker. “Get this,” he said.
“That’s my kid. No damn thing you can
do or say can take him away from me. If
I take the squat for this, you two mugs
are gonna hear from my kid, see?”

Joey Hango was hit hard, seeing his
old man taken by a single cop. He didn’t
seem to notice the affectionate arm Pop
Walker threw over his shoulder. He
kept his head down and the lower lip of
his fine mouth was trembling.

Teed gave Benny a jerk. He said : “I
heard that kind of mouthy fireworks

from tougher mugs than you. But when
you face the chair — ”

Benny Hango cut through with a
laugh. “You know what I’ll do if it
comes to that? Spit inna warden’s eye.
Let’s go. So long, kid.”

As Teed and the killer moved off
toward the door, Joey tried to break
away from Pop Walker. His voice,
broken, sobbing, cried out: “I wanna
go with my old man!” His puny fists
lashed out at Pop Walker’s moon of a
face up there just beyond reach. Walker
hung on to the kid.

ENNY HANGO,
down at headquarters
proved he was tough
stuff. He couldn’t be
broken. The cops had
an air-tight case
against him for mur¬
der, but they couldn’t get any informa¬
tion out of him as to whom he had been
with on the bank job. Benny Hango
might have been a rat, he had a rat’s ani¬
mal courage now that he was cornered.

All during the trial, Benny Hango’s
son lived at Pop Walker’s apartment.
Teed couldn’t understand that at first,
unless Joey Hango was just getting a
big kick out of sleeping in a bed and
getting his meals regularly and not
having to steal the money he spent. Pop
Walker was gone on the kid. He gave
Joey money and told him to go down
and buy himself a new suit. Bill Teed
just shook his head and told Pop he had
said good-bye to fifty bucks and the kid,
too. But the kid came back, dolled up
in the damndest pool-room regalia Bill
Teed had ever seen. The kid even had
a derby hat.

Joey Hango would sit around the
apartment all day while Pop Walker
was covering Hango’s trial. He didn’t
seem to be interested in what happened
to his old man.

One day when Pop Walker and Teed
were eating at the same lunch counter,
Pop told Bill that he had put Joey on
the honor system. The kid would do

Rats Breed Rats

whatever he thought he wanted to do
and could go anywhere, only he had to
tell Pop about it when he got back. As
he told this. Pop’s round face became
radiant. He was going to make some¬
thing of the kid, he said.

“Yes,” Pop said, chuckling, “the little
devil got mixed up in a pool game at
Rudy’s the other night. He lost six
bits. He came home and told me about
that. And when — ”

“Did he tell you that he played at
Rudy’s with a member of the Jigger
Cullem mob, a gunman named Spig
Morrava?” Bill asked.

The radiance of Pop’s face dimmed a
little. “Not Joey,” he said. “Somebody
else was. Morrava was there, but Joey
didn’t have anything to do with him.
He told me.”

Bill looked at Pop. He forced a laugh.
“I was just kidding.” But he wasn’t
kidding. He had seen Joey with Spig
Morrava quite frequently. He had seen
Joey give Morrava money — money that
Joey got from Pop Walker. The way
Bill figured it, Benny Hango had been
working with the Cullem mob on that
bank job. Jigger Cullem and his boys
were just about broke, Bill thought, for
they were unable to spend the hot loot
they had taken from the bank. They
were picking up money for food where
they could find it, waiting for their loot
to cool off.

Bill figured that was why Morrava
was patronizing the Hango kid — because
the pocket money that Pop furnished
Joey could be used toward buying the
Cullem mob food and drink. But Bill
couldn’t tell that to Pop Walker just
then. Pop would have taken it too hard.

The trial of Benny Hango came out
the only way that it could and the date
for his death in the chair was set. Benny
didn’t take his sentence lying down but
tried to climb the judge’s bench and tell
everybody off. You couldn’t tell, though,
whether this was defiance or a sort of
yellow-livered hysteria.

You could see Pop Walker’s hand in
the stuff the Courier printed about the

trial. Pop was trying to make things
easier for Joey Hango. Joey didn’t seem
to care one way or another. He con¬
tinued to live off Pop and pal around
with Spig Morrava.

“What do you intend to do with the
kid?” Teed asked Pop.

"Well, as soon as all the publicity has
died down and there’s no chance of Joey
being recognized as Benny’s son I’m
going to send him to a military school.
I’ll make a man of him.”

Bill thought : “Maybe you are if Mor¬
rava and Jigger Cullem don’t make
something else out of him first.”

Then there was that night when Joey
Hango tried to break into a grocery store
with a key somebody had given him.
Bill had been following the kid and col¬
lared him before Joey got the door open.
Somebody was covering for the kid —
somebody in a car up the alley. That
somebody fired a shot that didn’t do any
damage and then took it on the lam,
leaving the kid with Teed. Bill Teed
took the kid straight to Pop Walker and
told Pop the story as quickly and as
painlessly as possible.

WHEN Teed had fin¬
ished, Pop got up
slowly and went over
to where the kid was
sitting. He put both
hands on the kid’s
shoulders and asked
him if all this was true. Pop’s eyes were
shiny.

Joey Hango knocked Pop’s hands
down. His mouth sneered, and then it
was very much like his dad’s mouth.
“Listen, fats, I been sitting around here
playing you for a sucker because I like
what you hand out. I like having a bed
an’ a place to eat. Easy pickings on the
money, too, and I could help some
friends a mine. You and that damn dirty
copper sent my old man up. And if my
old man fries — ”

Teed said to Pop: “What this kid
needs he’s got waiting for him. I mean
a paid-up tuition in the reform school.”

100

G. T. Fleming-Roberts

“Shut up, Bill,” Pop said. He went
over to the kid, got him by the shoul¬
ders, shoved him across to the bedroom.
He pushed the kid through the door,
pulled the door shut, and locked it. He
turned, looking deflated.

Bill said: “I’m sorry, Pop. But I
think one reason the kid has been hang¬
ing around is that he’s got some nutty
idea he can get square with you and me
for what we did to his dad.”

“The kid has guts enough to try it,”
Pop said. “That’s what makes it tough.
There’s stuff in the kid, good stuff.”

“It’s nothing more than you can ex¬
pect, for him to turn out like this,” Bill
said. “Rats breed rats. You’d save a
lot of grief for yourself if you’d just let
me take him down to headquarters on
the charge of trying to break into that
grocery. That will at least get him away
from the Jigger Cullem outfit He’ll
learn fast from Jigger. The Cullem mob
must have been the gang that Benny
Hango was working with, but we can’t
prove it. We might be saving the kid
from a murder rap later on.”

Pop pounded one fat fist into the palm
of its mate. “If I only knew, Bill. If
we could only see into the future and
see how Benny Hango is going to face
the chair. I guess you know that Benny
has been asking to see his son.”

Bill Teed nodded. “And maybe that
hasn’t had me on a spot down at head¬
quarters. I knew you wouldn’t want the
kid to see his dad, so I’ve been pretend¬
ing I didn’t know anything about Joey.
You know, Pop, this personal stuff be¬
tween you and me is O. K., but Ijfiink
it’s gone far enough. I better take the
kid down to headquarters before some¬
thing turns up that makes me get it in
the neck from the chief. I got a family,
you know.”

Bill started for the bedroom door, but
Pop caught his arm. Pop’s face was pale,
his eyes moist. “Don’t do that, Bill.”
His voice was flat. All the appeal was
in his eyes. “It’s the last impression the
kid gets of his old man that’s going to
count. If Benny Hango gets hold of

that kid long enough to talk to him, he’ll
ruin the kid. And if Benny turns up a
hero in the electric chair, that’ll finish
the kid, too. But the reason Benny
wants to talk to the kid is — well, there’s
a certain tragic sense of life in all men,
an aching desire to be sure of some sort
of immortality. And Benny hates cops
and always has. It’s almost a creed with
him. His last desperate effort to grasp
that immortality will be an attempt to
drive that same creed home to the kid.
That way, Benny will live again in his
kid, see? We can’t have that.”

Bill said: “I’m not thinking of the
kid. I’m thinking you’re making an ass
of yourself. Rats breed rats.” He jerked
away from Pop and went to the bed¬
room door. When he got the door open
he found the room empty, the window
open, the curtains breezing out over the
fire-escape. He turned to Pop, his thin
face screwed into a knot. “I’m a hell of a
cop,” he said. “The kid blew while we
were talking all that stuff about immor¬
tality.”

A WEEK later Bill
Teed and Pop Walker
were compelled to wit¬
ness the death of
Benny Hango in the
electric chair. Teed
was among the official
witnesses and Walker represented the
local press. Benny lived up to all his
promises, and the only reason he didn’t
spit in the warden’s eye was that his
spitting was not accurate enough. He
did not die yellow.

The following morning, Bill and Pop
returned from the up-state pen. Pop
had no comments to make. He simply
went off to his news office.

About noon, Teed was bending over
the cigar counter at Rudy’s poolroom,
talking to Rudy, when somebody who
was buying cigarettes shoved up against
him. Teed looked around and saw that
it was Joey Hango. Joey’s lips sneered
at the dick and that made his face a sort
of living death mask of Benny Hango’s

Rats Breed Rats

101

face. It startled Teed more than a little.

Joey bought cigarettes and shoved a
hundred-dollar bill across the counter
to Rudy. Rudy ran a dice game some¬
where in his establishment, it was ru¬
mored, so Teed was not surprised when
Rudy changed the C-note. Bill made
no effort to stall Joey as the little punk
swaggered out of the place. But he did
insist on looking at the bill the kid had
passed. One look at the numbers and
he knew the bill was hot. It was part of
the loot from the bank stick-up. Teed
took the C-note and gave Rudy a receipt
for it.

Bill noticed, when he put the note in
his pocket, that there were gray grease
stains on it and he meant to have a man
in the police lab look at these stains be¬
fore he went much further. But from
Rudy’s he drove to a drug store which
was across the street from the ratty
three-story walk-up where the Cullem
mob hung out. He got there in time to
see Joey Hango enter the Cullem place.

Teed used the phone booth at the
drug store and called headquarters. He
asked for a man to be sent around to
the drug store at once. Then he called
Pop Walker at the Courier and told him
that he had found the Hango kid passing
hot money and that he thought now was
the time for a showdown. He hung up
without telling Pop where he was. Teed
didn’t know but what this was a trick on
the kid’s part to get him into some sort
of trap in which the Cullem mob was to
serve as jaws. If that was what it was,
he didn’t want Pop or anybody else
walking into the trap with him.

When the man came from headquar¬
ters, Teed gave him the C-note and told
him to get a report on the grease spots
on the bill and call him at the drug store.
When the man started back to head¬
quarters, Teed stood around in the drug
store, watching the place across the
street. He was there long enough to see
Jigger Cullem go in about forty minutes
later. Jigger was a crazy-looking hood,
what with his broken nose on which sat
large horn-rimmed glasses, and the blond

baby fuzz that grew on his head. He
didn’t look tough, but then neither does
a black widow spider.

The report Teed got from headquar¬
ters was that the grease stains were a
mixture of certain animal and vegetable
fatty substances mixed with salts of
magnesium and calcium. Teed knew
that a mixture like that comes from the
contact of soap and hard water. It gave
him an idea.

As soon as he had that report, Teed
went out of the drug store and there he
met Pop Walker. Pop said: “You
thought you’d put over a fast one, did
you? I simply went over to headquar¬
ters and found out you were here waiting
for a call. Where’s Joey?”

Teed nodded at the building across
the street. “Over there with his cute
little pal, Jigger Cullem and maybe Spig
Morrava and Mike Brandon. I’m going
over there alone.”

“If Joey’s up there, I’m going with
you,’*5 Pop insisted.

Teed shrugged. "I’m not going to
mess up this sidewalk with you all over
it. Let’s go across the street.”

The Cullem flat was on the top floor
of the walk-up, and Teed’s long legs took
him up the first flight of steps quickly.
He waited for Pop to join him. He said :
“Pop, you’re not barging into a mess like
this with me.”

“Like hell I’m not,” Pop said.

“I’m sorry,” Teed apologized, and
then hit Pop on the point of his most
prominent chin. Pop was out on his feet
and collapsed into Teed’s arms. Teed
let him down easy and then went on up
to Cullem’s place.

"V, HE door was opened
by Jigger Cullem him¬
self. Jigger’s eyes, as he
regarded Teed, looked
like glass behind glass.
In answer to Teed’s
question he said he
didn’t mind if Teed came in, though ob¬
viously he did. Teed went in and looked
around the crummy little living-room

102

G. T. Fleming-Roberts

with its newspapers, whiskey bottles,
playing cards, and cigarette butts lying
around. The Hango kid was standing
over near the window, a smoking cig¬
arette in his fingers. Joey’s fingers
weren’t steady.

“You have a warrant?” Jigger asked
in his monotone.

Teed pulled his revolver. “This is it,”
He stepped up close to Jigger and re¬
lieved the four-eyed killer of his gun.
He gun-drove Jigger over to where Joey
stood and patted the kid’s pockets. Joey
wasn’t armed.

“Let’s go look at the bathroom,” Bill
said, thinking of the hard water and
soap stains on that C-note. He prodded
Jigger ahead of him into the bathroom,
went over to the lavatory and tried to
turn on the water. Opening the taps, no
water came out. Cullem said if he
wanted to wash he’d have to go to the
kitchen.

Bill kicked under the lavatory with the
toe of his shoe and discovered that the
drain pipe was loose. He backed, mo¬
tioned Jigger forward with his gun.
“Tough on the plumbers’ union, Jigger,
but you’ll have to take down that drain
pipe. That’s where the money is, isn’t
it ?”

Jigger said, “What money?” and
turned a little pale.

“The loot from the bank stick-up you
.and your pals pulled with Benny
Hango.”

Behind Bill, somebody said: “Drop
the rod, dick.”

Teed turned without dropping his
gun. In the bathroom door was Spig
Morava and red-haired Mike Brandon.
Teed knew no matter how good a shot
he was he couldn’t gun both of those
men before one of them gunned him. So
he dropped his gun.

“The dick is in the know, Spig,” Jig¬
ger said.

Morrava shrugged. “Just so he don’t
tell, we don’t care.”

“He won’t tell,” Mike Brandon said.

Joey Hango squeezed in between the
two men in the doorway. His face was

white, like he might be sick any minute.
Mike Brandon said to him: “You pick
up the dick’s gun, Joey, and then you
and I will sort of square things for your
old man by taking this guy for a ride,
huh ?” *

“They’ll frame you, Joey,” Teed
warned.

Joey stumbled forward and crouched
to pick up Teed’s gun. Jigger Cullem
said :“And get my rod out of the dick’s
pocket, Joey.”

Bill Teed looked down. He saw Joey’s
fingers close over the grips of the police
gun and saw Joey’s finger slide into the
trigger guard. Bill knew that something
that wasn’t on the books was going to
happen.

OEY lifted the gun,
spun around on one
heel like a dervish.
Still in a crouch, he
fired. Spig Morrava
looked like the most
surprised man who
ever lived — or died. His broad flat face
went blank as he started sliding down
the frame of the bathroom door, both
hands clutched to his chest.

Mike Brandon’s gun dipped a bit to
take in Joey Hango. Bill Teed kicked
Joey from behind, knocked him flat on
the floor, and at the same time pulled
Cullem’s automatic from his pocket and
gave Mike Brandon two shots — one
through the leg and the other through
the right arm. Going down, Mike Bran¬
don tried to cross his gun to his left
hand, but Joey came up from the floor
to rush Mike and managed to get to the
gun first.

At about this time, Jigger Cullem
tried a flying tackle that took Teed from
behind and thigh-high. Bill came down,
squirmed over to put the gun on Jigger.
Jigger released Bill’s legs to try and get
hold of the automatic Bill Teed was
using.

Bill used the gun to slap a barrel blow
to the side of Jigger’s head.

Pop Walker broke into the Cullem

Rats Breed Rats

103

apartment about that time to see Joey
Hango grinning and shaking hands with
a grim and slightly puzzled Bill Teed.
Joey was saying that he had planned this
all the time. He had passed that hot note
right under Bill’s nose as a way of telling
Bill where he could nail the bank stick-
up boys without much trouble. Joey had
found out where the money was hidden
and had swiped one of the hot notes just
to use as a signal to Bill. He wondered
if that sort of made up for things and if
Bill thought he’d make a good cop later

HEN the police were cleaning up
the Cullem place, Teed got Pop off
in a corner and asked what he had done
to make the Hango kid change overnight.
Pop didn’t know. He hadn’t said any¬
thing that would have caused the sudden
change. No, Joey must have made the
right decision himself.

"Of course,” Pop added, “this might

have had something to do with it.” He
picked up a sheet from the morning
Courier that was on the table in the
Cullem living-rooip. There was an item
on the sheet, by-lined by Walker. It
read —

HANGO BREAKS DOWN ON
WAY TO CHAIR

GANGLAND'S LITTLE IRON MAN
CRIES FOR MERCY AS LIFE OF
CRIME DRAWS TO A CLOSE

Bill didn’t read any farther. He just
looked at Pop Walker and said: “You
damned liar.”

Pop said: “I felt that the last im¬
pression of his dad the kid got would
determine what he decided to be. I knew
a yellow streak down his idol would
make the kid ashamed of his dad and of
the kind of life his dad had represented.”

“So you just painted the yellow streak
«i,” Bill said.

"Drums Do Talk." hr H. Bedford -Jones;
•Telegraph." a story of Australian trails and
trackers by Albert Richard Wet Jen; "High
Pressure Area," Westmoreland Gray's stlr-
© ring story of trouble on an oil fleld; s war ©
aviation yam by Loring Dowst, and other

lot NEW

ASTROLOGY

AUGUST ISSUE o* sale at all newsstands JULY I Oth

10,001 MOTIVES

A “Bishop”

By WYATT

CHAPTER ONE

The Face at the Window

HE Bishop was
•y^^SxJLLM ' shooting craps in one
t^ie uPsta'rs gam'
I W bling-rooms when the

J murder took place. I
was standing beside
Ijgj holding his mon¬
ey, because the Bishop has a peg leg —
he wears an artificial foot — and always
carries a cane in his left hand. This
leaves only his right hand free and he
doesn’t want to be bothered by anything
but the dice.

He was in the middle of a hot win¬
ning streak. He’d shake the dice, keep¬
ing his hand palm down, balance back on
his heel and his cane, look owlishly
around at the other players and say:
“Wouldn’t it be terrible if I were to
fling a seven?” And then he’d do it.

The Bishop is a short, heavy-bodied
man of about sixty, with a head as round
and bald and pink as a balloon. He has
small, puckish features and no neck be¬
tween his round head and his big shoul¬
ders. He looks more like an aging over¬
grown imp than like a newspaperman.
Actually he’s the political writer on the
South City Democrat, and has been on
that same paper for forty-two years, or
twenty years longer than I’ve been liv¬
ing.

This was at the Red and Black Gam-

Everyone in South City knew about the first ten thousand reasons why
Ralph McDonald should have been bumped off. It was the ten-thousand-
and-first that came as a surprise — to all but the Bishop and Mrs. Good,
that pair of none-such newshounds who knew what could happen when
a honey-haired fire-ball of Southern charm got cued with a little
reverse English.

104

FOR MURDER

Story

BLASSINCAME

bling Club, at a party given by one of
the city commissioners. A party given
by a city commissioner at a gambling
club will sound strange only to persons
who don’t know South City. The govern¬
ment airport there was being enlarged
and this was in celebration. The com-

The closet door swung open and the
corpse walked out into the. room.

missioner himself wasn’t present (he was
entertaining some of the older officers
elsewhere) but he’d sent a few cops to
sit outside and keep everybody away ex¬
cept the invited guests. There were news¬
papermen, young men from the Civic
Clubs which had worked to bring the
105

106

Wyatt Blassingame

new addition to the local air field, the
young officers, their wives and dates.

That was the set-up for the murder.
It was a neat, clever murder and it would
have been a swell case to cover if the
Bishop hadn’t got interested in it.

At this particular moment the Bishop
was looking for a ten. He’d been rolling
for two minutes and he couldn’t make
the ten and he wouldn’t fall off. That’s
when we heard the shot.

It sounded loud enough to be in the
room with us, though it was actually a
couple of doors down the hall. It startled
everybody — except the Bishop. He’s
never been startled at anything. A kind
of electric silence struck the room and
everybody stood tense and listening.

The Bishop said to the dice: “Be ten,
I got no more time to play.” It was a
ten and I scooped up the money.

Then the woman screamed. I have
never heard a scream like it — one single
yell that sounded as if it would split
the vocal chords. A woman yelling in
terror, and I mean terror. It came from
down the hall where the shot had
sounded.

I was the first person into the hall,
running hard. The second door on the
right was open and I knew that was
where the yell must have come from and
I went skidding over the sill. I almost
banged into the girl who stood just
inside the room. She was staring toward
the window on the left. Her mouth was
still open, though no more sound was
coming out. Her eyes bulged a half-inch
from their sockets and her face was so
bloodless the rouge looked black against
it. She didn’t say anything, just kept
staring at the window.

LOOKED. There
■0 I wasn’t anything but an
open window with cop-
W JiW per screening and the

yp night dark beyond.

^ B# Even after I went close

^ to the window I didn’t

see anything except the shingled roof
of the porch — this was on the second

floor — and a big overhanging oak tree.

Other persons were rushing into the
room now and I turned back to face
them. That was when I saw the corpse.
It lay face down near the wall on the
other side of the room. There wasn’t
any doubting that it was a corpse, be¬
cause the bullet had hit the man right at
the base of the skull.

The man’s face was half turned toward
me. He was — or had been — Ralph
McDonald, the president of the Junior
Chamber of Commerce and one of South
City’s richest young men.

There were four or five persons in the
room now. One of them was the Bishop.
It’s surprising how fast he can move
when he wants to. He was closing the
door after him, locking it to keep the
crowd out, and muttering: “Why the
hell couldn’t they have shot him two
hours ago? Damn Journal’ll get the
break now. Ai God ! These dumb mur¬
derers.”

The girl said, as if she’d been trying
to say it for hours : “The face — there at
the window ! I saw it !”

The Bishop pegged over and looked
out. “Nobody shot him through this
window. No hole in the screen. Any¬
how, looks like he was shot from behind,
from about the hall door.”

“There’s a window down at the end
of the hall,” I said, “which lets out onto
this same porch roof.”

The Bishop was pushing and heaving
and he finally got the screen up. Be¬
hind us everybody else in the room was
asking the girl what had happened and
she was just sobbing and saying now
and then : “The face. ... It was — terri¬
ble!”

The Bishop said: “Crawl out there,
Eddie, and see what the hell she’s
squawking about. And see if the window
at the end of the hall is open.”

“I’m not going out there. The guy
may still be hanging around. He might
pot me, too.”

“Ai God!” the Bishop said. “How’m
I going to know what’s out there if you
don’t so look? Go on! Crawl out!”

10,001 Motives for Murder

107

“There’ll be cops up here in a minute.
Let them look. They’re paid for it.”

“Do I have to do it myself?”

“Oh all right,” I said.

I don’t know why I let the Bishop
bully me into doing all the crazy things
he thinks up.

I climbed out the window onto the
roof of the porch. The Bishop said,
“Look at the window at the end of the
hall,” and turned back into the room
again.

It was one of these huge, rambling,
old-fashioned Southern houses and this
side porch stretched almost the full
length of the building. The roof slanted
sharply so I had to walk with one leg
bent at the knee to keep my balance. I
keep peering all around, but there wasn’t
anybody on the roof except me. I went
down to the end, where the hall window
was, and both the window and the screen
were open.

Whoever shot Ralph McDonald had
probably stood in the hallway, I figured.
After that one shot they’d run to this
window, crawled out, and had either
dropped off the edge of the porch or
had climhed into the big oak which over¬
hung the roof and got down that way.

I was considering this when I heard
a noise in the tree.

If I’d had time to think I would have
pretended I didn’t hear anything. I’d
have climbed in through that open win¬
dow and got the hell away from there.
But there wasn’t time to think. I heard
the sound and I swung around and
peered up into the tree.

A tiny speck of light from the window
reflected off one of the leaves. I saw
the leaf move. And in that tiny speck
of light I saw a hand — a hand that was
no bigger than a doll’s hand, a thing no
more than one or two inches long, but all
covered with hair. Then a face appeared.
It was about the size of a baseball, mat¬
ted with hair, and with eyes that gleamed
blood red.

The thing made a weird peeping cry
and leaped straight out of the tree onto
me.

THINK I yelled. The
Bishop says it was
either me or a cat in
heat. He says it made
the girl’s shriek sound
like Talullah Bank¬
head’s whispering. I
went half crazy trying to tear the thing
loose from my shoulder and when I got
it off my shoulder it got into my hair.
It was clawing at me and cheeping. Then
my feet skidded from under me and I
went sailing off the edge of the roof. I
came down with a bang, fortunately in
a freshly spaded flower bed.

The thing which had been on my head
jumped off. It ran through a rectangle
of light from one of the first-floor win¬
dows, and I saw it was a monkey.

I sat there and felt a little sick and
cursed myself and cursed the Bishop
and cursed John Bollo. John Bollo is
the man who owns the Red and Black
Qub, the place where all this was hap¬
pening. He was nuts about animals. Be¬
sides the monkey there was a parrot, two
dogs, and a tame ’coon around the place.
I knew that, but I had forgotten it.

I was still sitting there cursing when
John Bollo came out. He chuckled when
I told him what had happened. Even
a murder in his gambling house didn’t
dampen John Bollo ’s good humor. He
was plump, with blond hair and a fixed,
beaming smile. Even when he was
watching somebody make a long run on
the roulette wheel or the dice table he’d
just stand and beam at them until he
looked stupid.

“Will Mr. Atticus” — the Bishop’s real
name was Roscoe Atticus — “kid you!”
he chuckled. “My! You should have
heard the yell you let out !”

“I wish I had killed that lousy monkey
of yours, ” I said. I was feeling ashamed
of myself, and angry, and even if I had
fallen in soft ground it had been a hell
erf a bump.

We went back into the building. The
cops who had been stationed outside
were there now and one of them had
phoned for Lieutenant Browder, who is

108

Wyatt Blassinganu

Science versus Crime in South City.
Browder’d said keep everybody out of
the room where the murder took place
until he arrived.

John Bollo and I talked to the Bishop.
"It was nobody but Oscar, my monkey,
that Miss Howell saw looking in the
window,” Bollo said, grinning that silly
grin of his. “It jumped on Eddie’s shoul¬
der and frightened him.”

“Ai God!” the Bishop said. "I
thought you were being scalped.”

He swayed back, propping himself on
his stick and looking at me. “You didn’t
find the gun while you were out there?”

“I didn’t find anything except that
damn monkey.”

“The gun wasn’t in the room?” John
Bollo asked.

“Nope,” the Bishop said. He turned
toward the gambler, pivoting on his peg
leg and his stick. His small puckered
features were cherubic and his bald head
shone pink. “You musta been sorry to
see McDonald get it — with him owing
you so much money.”

There was a fraction of a second’s
hesitation. Then Bollo chuckled. “You
sure learn things in a hurry, Mr. Atti-
cus.”

“That’s what they pay me for.” The
Bishop waved one thick hand at me.
"Come on, Eddie. Let’s go talk to the
girl.”

I followed him, saying: “She’s all up¬
set now. And it’s two hours after our
deadline. Why not wait until this after¬
noon?”

The Bishop didn’t even pay attention
to me. “Her name’s Nancy Howell, old
Wayne Howell’s daugher, and she was
supposed to marry this man, McDonald.”
He walked straight through the room
with the bar, even though it had been
a good half-hour since he had a drink.
That meant the Bishop was excited.
There was something here which had
him more interested than any average
murder should. He was thirty-five years
past police reporting, and when he got
interested in a case now there was plenty
to it. I knew Ralph McDonald had

been a prominent young business man,
but it would take more than just that
to make the Bishop forget a drink.

We stopped before a door at the end
of the hall. “You talk to her,” the
Bishop said. “The women always love
to weep on your beautiful shoulder.”

“Aw, Bishop. I — ”

“Go on, handsome.”

The one thing that really gets me is
to be kidded about my face. A guy
can’t help his face. I’d spent four years
on the college boxing team hoping to
get a bent nose or a cauliflower ear,
but I never did. I said: “Now damn it,
Bishop — ”

“Ai God! If I had your face and
my inclinations — ”

T WAS a long room
furnished as a lounge
with red-leather up-
holstered chairs and
£ sofas. Nancy Howell
' was half lying on one
’ of the sofas and a
couple of girls were hovering over her.
She was reduced now to a sort of quiet
sobbing.

I said : “Excuse me, Miss Howell, but
I’ve found out what it was you saw at
the window. It was John Bollo’s little
monkey, that’s all. I thought you’d want
to know.”

She was staring up at me. For a few
seconds she wasn’t making any sound at
all. She wasn’t even breathing. She
said finally: “A monkey?”

She tried a small smile at me, al¬
though her eyes were still wet with tears
and her lips quivery. “That must have
been it. But it was such a shock. It
was so — so horrible.”

“It must have been,” I said.

One of the other girls said I was
awfully brave to go outside and look,
and the other girl said she knew I was
Eddie Edison and I was a reporter for
the Democrat and her name and phone
number was. ... I would have made a
break for it then, but the Bishop was
right there and I knew he wouldn’t let

10,001 Motives for Murder

109

me scram. So I asked Miss Howell if
she felt well enough to tell what had
happened.

“I — don’t know. Maybe I ought to
talk about it.” She made a queer little
frightened movement and put her hand
on my wrist. I sat down on the sofa
by her. She was a pretty girl, about
twenty-five but now she looked very
young and feminine and hurt. Her hair
was blond and her eyes were big and
gray. “I — I’d just got here, and I was
looking around for Ralph — ”

The Bishop interrupted: “You’d just
got here?”

She looked up at him and touched a
handerkerchief to her eyes. “Yes. I
wasn’t feeling well and I phoned Ralph
at his office this afternoon that I wasn’t
coming. But after I’d slept a while I felt
better, so I dressed and drove out and
I looked around for him and — ” Her
hands tightened on my wrist. She turned
her little face toward me then and I could
see she was trying to keep back the tears.

“I’d just met Ralph in the hall and we
stepped into that room a minute ’cause
he wanted to ask how I felt, and. ...”
Her fingers dug into my wrist. “That’s
when it happened !”

“You didn’t see anybody? Anything
except that face at the window?”

“That’s all. I — I must have been too
shocked to move.” She began to cry
softly. “I still can’t believe it.”

It was then I remembered the ten
thousand dollars. I asked if she knew
whether or not Ralph McDonald had had
the money with him.

“The ten thousand dollars the Civic
Clubs collected to buy the land for the
airport,” I explained.

“I don’t think so. He wouldn’t be
carrying it in his pocket, would he?”

Out in the hall the Bishop dragged
me through the crowd and into a cor¬
ner. “Why’d you think McDonald had
that airport money?”

On a paper the size of the Democrat
a reporter has a lot of slush to cover
besides his regular beat, and I had to
write up all the Civic Club meetings as

well as police stuff. In trying to bring
the new addition to the government air¬
field to South City three of the clubs had
collected enough money to buy the
necessary land and donate it to the gov¬
ernment. “Ben Steiner from the Rotary
Club, Muddy Marshall from the Lions,
and Ralph McDonald for the Junior
Chamber were the treasurers,” I told the
Bishop. “At their meeting tonight all
the money was turned over to McDonald.
I was there when they gave it to him.”

“What did he do with it ?”

“He was to put it in his office safe un¬
til tomorrow when the banks open.”

There was a gleam in the Bishop’s
eyes that I didn’t like. “Ai God!” he
said. “Come on!”

“Bishop, now listen. ...”

He went over to the bar and had a
drink and said he wanted a pint bottle
of whiskey. Their whiskey was all in
quarts and the Bishop made them pour
a pint into a flat rum bottle they had.
He stuck that’ into his pocket and started
out. For thirty years the Bishop has
drunk two pints of whiskey every night,
and on special occasions such as this,
he’ll double his quota. Yet he never
buys anything but pint bottles. He says
they fit his hand better. And besides,
he says, if he was to ever start buying
his liquor by the quart he might develop
into a drunkard.

CHAPTER TWO

10,000 Motives For Murder

ALPH MCDON¬
ALD’S real-estate of¬
fice was on the second
floor of a building on
Commerce Street. The
office door was locked.
I said: “I told you it
would be locked, Bishop.”

“We’ll go outside and climb up the
fire-escape and get in the window. That’s
a spring lock on the door. You can open
it from the inside and let me in.”

I said: “There’s a law against that

110

Wyatt Blassingame

sort of thing. People get shot for break¬
ing into houses.”

“Hurry up!” the Bishop said impa¬
tiently. “We ain’t got all night.”

“Damn it !” I said, and my voice was
thinner than I meant for it to be. “I
climbed out on that roof for you, and
what happened ? I almost broke my fool
neck. Every time you bother with a
murder case, something happens to me.
Why don’t you stick to politics?”

“I am sticking to politics,” the Bishop
said. “You just let me tend to my own
business and I’ll tend to yours. Now
hurry.”

“But if the window’s locked?”

“Then kick it out.”

“And have the cops up here by the
time the glass hits the alley! You know
what Lieutenant Browder’ll do if he
catches me breaking in here. Even if
he didn’t put me in jail for life I’d never
get another spot of news out of him.”

“You let me worry about that prude.
This thing is bigger than he is. Now
get!”

I don’t know why I argue with him.
The Bishop can always make me do his
dirty work, somehow or other, and I
know it. Besides, he had me excited now.
I knew this was a first-rate murder story
for South City though I still didn’t see
the political angle that had Bishop Atti-
cus so interested. But he’d said he was
sticking to politics, and he’d said this
was bigger than Lieutenant Browder —
and I knew the Bishop didn’t lie about
things of this kind. So I was excited.

But I was still scared.

T WAS black-dark in
the alley. I felt my
way along, stumbling
over a stray tin can
and making a noise
that sounded to me
i like the bombard¬
ment of Rotterdam. I wondered if the
cop on the beat would shoot me before
I had a chance to yell and tell him who
I was. And then I thought about the
man who’d murdered Ralph McDonald

and wondered if he could be close by. I
remembered how very still and dead that
one bullet had left Ralph. My stomach
felt queasy and my hands were dripping
sweat and I thought I heard something
roaring down the alley toward me — then
realized it was just the blood pounding
in my ears.

I could barely see the fire-escape
against the sky. I reached up and got
ahold of it and started to climb. The
iron was rusty and sharp against my
hands. It made little squeaking noises.
But nobody shot at me and I reached
the landing without trouble. I rubbed
my hands on my trousers and got ready
to go to work on the window.

The window stood wide open.

“Well, I’ll be damned !” I said. It was
careless of a man to leave an open win¬
dow on a fire-escape, especially with
ten thousand dollars inside. But the
weather was hot, and maybe the money
hadn’t been left here after all.

I listened, and there wasn’t any sound.
So I stuck one leg over the windowsill,
and then my head. And that’s when the
blow landed.

I thought I’d been shot. I thought the
top of my head was blown off. I could
feel myself falling and it was like fall¬
ing through a sky full of exploding rock¬
ets of red and green and white with me
turning over and over and over between
them.

I must have struck the man across
the knees as I fell, though I don’t re¬
member it. I remember hitting the floor
and then there was somebody on top of
me who seemed to be having convulsions
trying to get off. I started swinging wild,
crazy blows. Something banged me in
the eye. Then my left hand got tangled
up in a man’s hair and I held on. I could
tell from his hair where his chin should
be and I let him have about four, one
after another. I fought as a middle¬
weight in college and I’ve put on seven
or eight pounds since then and I was
using them all. When I let go his hair
there wras a slumping noise as the fellow
went limp on the floor.

10,001 Motives for Murder

111

GOT up and groped
my way across the of¬
fice and opened the
hall door. I was pant¬
ing and I felt sick. I
didn’t know if I was
hurt badly or not.

“Hello,” the Bishop said. “Some kind
of disturbance in here?” He pushed past
me. “Where’s the light? I don’t want
to bruise myself stumbling around in the
dark.”

He switched on the light, closed the
hall door, then turned around and looked
at the man on the floor. He was a thin,
wiry young guy with inky black hair
and one of these dark, sensitive, intel¬
lectual faces. He was out cold.

“You know him?” the Bishop asked.

“It’s Ben Steiner. He and Muddy
Marshall and Ralph McDonald were the
three men who had charge of the funds
collected by the Civic Clubs until the
money was all turned over to McDon¬
ald.”

“Thought I’d seen him. Must be old
Ben Steiner’s son.” The Bishop knew
the father of everybody in South City
under seventy years old.

He turned around slowly, pivoting as
usual on his peg leg — sort of revolving
around it. And halfway around he
stopped. “Yep,” he said. “There it is.”

It was a safe and the door was wide
open. There were a few scattered papers
inside, but there was no ten thousand
dollars.

“There’s your motive," the Bishop
said. "Ten thousand of ’em.” He limped
over to a watercooler in one corner and
put two fingers of water in a paper cup.
He added an equal amount of whiskey
from the bottle he’d brought and gulped
it down. Then he refilled the paper cup
with water and limped back and poured
it on Ben Steiner’s face.

After a few moments Steiner got up.
He brushed back his wet hair. His face
was already beginning to swell and grow
discolored. His eyes were hard and
black, with no expression in them. I
couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but I

could tell he wasn’t afraid. He wasn’t
any more afraid than the Bishop was.

The Bishop said: “Did you get the
money?”

Steiner looked at him squarely. “No.”

“Who did get it?”

“I don’t know. How would I?”

“You came here looking for it.”

“I came to see if it was here. I was
at the Red and Black Club when Ralph
McDonald was killed and I was afraid
it was because of the money. So I came
to see if it was here.”

“Looks like you would have turned on
the light so you could see better,” the
Bishop said.

Ben Steiner just looked straight at
the Bishop without answering.

I said: "Maybe we ought to search
him, Bishop?”

There was a change in Steiner’s face
then. I can’t explain it exactly because
it wasn’t that much of a change — just
a look in his eyes. Maybe he was get¬
ting afraid. Maybe he was making up
his mind what he would do.

He said : "No, I’m not being searched.
I don’t have the money, but I’m not
going to be searched.”

“Hell,” the Bishop said. “We’re a
couple of friends. We’re better than the
cops.”

“No.”

The Bishop shrugged and started
limping across the room toward the tele¬
phone. If he phoned the cops, we’d be
in as tough a spot as Steiner, but he
might have done it regardless. God
would have a hard time trying to guess
what the Bishop’d do.

When he picked up the phone, Steiner
said : “All right. Search me. My wallet’s
in my inside coat pocket.”

There was thirty-two dollars in it. I
put it back and reached in his right trou¬
ser pocket and found fifty-five cents. In
his left trouser pocket was a key ring and
a half-package of mints. He wore a white
cotton suit, without a vest. He had a
watch in the watch pocket, a handker¬
chief in the hip pocket. He had another
handkerchief in the breast coat pocket

112

Wyatt Blassingame

and in the left coat pocket was a half¬
package of cigarettes and two paper
books of matches.

I stepped around on the other side
of him and stuck my hand in his left
coat pocket. This put me on the left side
of him, and he had plenty of room for
his right uppercut. I saw it coming, but
it took me so completely by surprise
I was still thinking about dodging when
it landed. I stumbled backward, hit a
chair, and went over on my fanny.

SAT there and I could
see but I couldn’t get
up. I saw Ben Steiner
whirl and spring for
the hall door. He
snatched the door open
and leaped through —
and came down flat on his face in the
hallway. The Bishop had tripped him
with his walking stick.

But Steiner just hit and bounced. By
the time I got to the hall he was down
the stairs and gone. I went after him
anyway. And halfway down the stair
I stumbled. I didn’t fall. I just kept
going faster and faster and I couldn’t
stop. I managed to aim for the street
door, though. It was open. As I went
out somebody tried to come in and we
both spilled like a ton of brick on the
sidewalk

When I sat up and could see again I
was looking at Muddy Marshall, the
third of the three Civic Club officials
who had known the money was in Ralph
McDonald’s office safe. He was sitting
in the gutter looking dazed and his nose
was bleeding.

Behind me a voice said: “What hap¬
pened? What’s the trouble here?”

I looked around and it was Lieutenant
Browder, the pride of the South City
police department.

I knew Browder wasn’t going to re¬
gard lightly the fact that I had broken
into the office of a man who had just
been murdered — an office out of which
ten thousand dollars had been swiped.
Browder never regards anything lightly.

"What happened ?” he asked again.

I couldn’t think of anything to say, so
I said: “Hello. Hello, Lieutenant.”

He said: “You’re both drunk. What
are you doing here?”

I didn’t answer. Muddy Marshall
wiped away the blood that was trickling
from his nose and said: “I was just
starting in the doorway when this man
ran into me. I don’t know — ”

He recognized me for the first time,
blinking at me and looking drunk. “Oh,
it’s you Edison. Why this violent and
felonious assault?”

“I stumbled.”

The Bishop called cheerfully from the
stairway inside the building: “Come on
in, Lieutenant. We’re waiting for you.”

Browder swung around and looked at
the doorway for a moment. His face was
dark with suspicion. Then he went
through the door and up the stair and
Muddy Marshall and I followed.

The Bishop was standing at the head
of the stair The hall behind him was
semi-dark. The door to Ralph McDon¬
ald's real-estate office was closed and no
light showed over the transom. The
Bishop was balanced on his heels and
cane, the forward thrust of his stomach
helping to keep his equilibrium.

He said: “We knew you’d be right
down. Lieutenant. So Eddie and I came
on ahead. We’ve been waiting. We
would have gone in and had a chair, but
the door’s locked.”

It was too, thanks to that spring lock.
Lieutenant Browder didn’t lave to use
the fire-escape though. He had McDon¬
ald’s keys.

CHAPTER THREE

The Social Cesspool

T’S always fun to
watch the Bishop
and Browder together.
They don’t exactly
hate one another, but
there’s no love lost be¬
tween them. On the
other hand, each respects the other.

10,001 Motives for Murder

113

Browder is a rather handsome, mid¬
dle-aged man. He’s a show-off and he
has a good sense of the dramatic and he
loves publicity. He will keep a case run¬
ning just as long as the public stays in¬
terested. He lets out information to the
papers a little bit at a time, so the readers
get the impression that Lieutenant
Browder is constantly zooming from
spot to spot gathering new facts backed
by scientific proof. But he’s no fool.
He’s had two trips to the F.B.I. training
school and he really knows his stuff.
He’s a man on the way up and he takes
himself with deadly seriousness and he’s
honest. He’d work up a vagrancy case
against Mrs. Roosevelt if he believed her
guilty.

The Bishop never admits to any in¬
terest in details. He stood back now
looking bored and having a drink while
Browder worked. And Browder’s thor¬
ough. He must have wound up with
every fingerprint in that office. He prob¬
ably knew the Bishop and I had been
there, but he was waiting until his prints
were developed, waiting until he had
proof before he did anything. He worked
that way.

The only thing he asked was :
“Where’d you get that black eye, Eddie?
And that lump on your jaw?”

The Bishop said : “Ain’t it pretty? On
him a black eye has lavender edges. He
can’t help it, but he’s beautiful.”

I said I must have got the bruises
when I stumbled into Marshall.

Marshall’s nose was still leaking blood
into the handkerchief he held.

“You caused me bodily injury and
harm,” he said. “Distress and duress.
Duress per minas. Violence sufficient to
inspire a person of ordinary firmness
with fear of loss of life or limb. Maybe
I ought to sue.”

He was a young lawyer only three
years out of law school and he was sup¬
posed to be good, but some persons said
whiskey would surely get him. He had
a heavily fleshed face with red-veined
pads beneath the eyes. Of course, he
didn’t drink as much as the Bishop, but

then the Bishop was a rare alcoholic
genius who drank, as he said, “just to
keep his throat wet,” and liquor rarely
had any effect on him.

It was Marshall — he’d been at the Red
and Black Club when McDonald was
shot — who had told Browder about the
ten thousand dollars. “The sinister cir¬
cumstance,” Marshall said, having a
drink with the Bishop at the water
cooler, “is that I knew the combination
to this safe. Ralph had to leave town
tomorrow on business and I was sup¬
posed to put this coin of the realm in
the bank. Perfectly legal transaction, you
know. Witnesses, et cetera. Signed
voucher from bank. And now the damn
money’s gone. How can I put it in the
bank ?”

The Bishop seemed to be growing
bored. He said good-night to Browder
and Marshall and we left.

THRIVING back uptown I asked the
Bishop where was the political
angle in this case, the angle that had him
so interested. “Ai God!” he said. “It's
all around you. This is South City ! This
is the Cradle of the Confederacy and
Richmond is just an upstart. There
ain’t another town in the world like this

He was off on one of his favorite
topics now — the foibles and idionsyn-
crasies of South City society and politics,
which are often one and the same thing.
He always said this was the reason he
had stayed with the Democrat for forty-
two years, “and never a day without a
laugh.”

“But where does politics fit in here?”
I asked.

“Where the hell did the murder take
place?” the Bishop said. “In a gam¬
bling house. And the party was given by
one of the city commissioners. Now
there’s hardly a prude in South City
who’ll object to a city commissioner giv¬
ing a party in a gambling house — as
long as it’s not made into an open scan¬
dal. But let the party get spread in the
papers, they’ll kick out the commissioner.

114

Wyatt Blassingame

There’s always going to be gambling and
gals in this town, because the town wants
’em. But the town wants ’em kept quiet.
Why ? Well, nobody can live comfortably
without sin. And a lot of folks can’t
live comfortably with it, once they ad¬
mit they’re living with it. This is just
South City’s way of preserving the fair¬
est flower of its youth untarnished — and
satisfied. ”

“But the murder’s already commit¬
ted,” I said. “It has to go in the paper.”

“Sure. But everybody connected with
this thing comes from old, prominent
families. If it’s solved quick, finished,
folks will hush it up. They won’t talk
about it, except to their friends, and
nobody’s feelings will be hurt by think¬
ing they’ve got corrupt city commis¬
sioners. But let it drag on for days, with
that prude Browder feeding out facts like
gasoline on a fire, and Hank Murray will
get himself elected by it.”

“What kind of guy is Murray?”

The Bishop had a drink straight,
which is rare, and spat out the window,
which is rarer. “A self-respecting corn
cob wouldn’t wipe itself on Hank Mur¬
ray. He wouldn’t clean up this town —
but he would make sure the graft went
in his own pocket.”

“Where does it go now?”

“Believe it or not, part of it goes into
the police pension fund. And part goes
to the Community Chest. And who the
hell knows where the rest goes? But
it’s a good town. Lower taxes than any
you can name. And not much city debt,
and not much real crime. It ain’t heaven,
but it ain’t Birmingham either.”

I said : “It’s a wonder you haven’t ex¬
posed this in your column. I thought
you wrote the truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth.”

The Bishop had another small snifter,
swallowing this one slowly, and as if he
liked it. “When I first went to work
on the Democrat I wrote the whole truth.
I wrote the whole truth about the South
City baseball team for three days and
after that they wouldn’t let me in the
park. I had to climb a tree and use a

telescope to cover the games. The team
found out about it and sawed the limb
half in two so next time I climbed up
there the limb broke. That’s when I
broke my leg. It could have been set
easy enough, but the doctor I went to
happened to own stock in the baseball
team.”

The last time the Bishop had told me
how he lost his leg he’d said it was shot
off when he was too slow getting out of
a window on the one occasion in history
when a train on the South City-Mobile
Railroad came in ahead of time. There
were a vast number of stories about how
Roscoe Atticus came to be called the
Bishop and about how he lost his leg,
but nobody could swear to the truth.

ACK at the Red and
Black Club, where I’d
left my ancient bus, I
f got out and the Bishop
slid under the wheel of
his own car. “I almost
forgot, Eddie. Did
you feel anything in Steiner’s pocket
before he socked you?”

“Not a thing but a silk handkerchief.
At least it felt like a silk handkerchief.
I know damn well he didn’t have the
money. I can’t figure why he socked me
and ran.”

“Umn-n.” The Bishop rubbed one
hand around the bald globe of his head.
"Umn-n, you better be careful, Eddie.
I don’t think so, but somebody might be
willing to kill for that handkerchief.
They might even be willing to kill you
just because you know about it.”

He drove off and left me there staring
after him.

I was still standing there, staring,
when Nancy Howell came out of the Red
and Black Club with John Bollo. She
had stopped crying, but her face was
pale and strained. Bollo had his arm
around her waist and he was grinning.
For some reason I didn’t seem to like
that man.

They got in Bollo’s Packard and drove
off.

115

Wyatt Blassingame

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AFTER crawling out oi
bed, about two thal
afternoon, I went tc
Pete’s Restaurant foi
breakfast, and while
downing my ham and
eggs I read the after¬
noon Journal. They played the story up
big. The murder shot, the Journal said
had been fired from a distance of more
than ten feet, from about the hall door¬
way probably. It was a small-caliber gun
the exact caliber not yet known. The
murderer had probably ducked out of
an upstairs window and dropped from
the porch roof to the ground. Moulage
imprints had been made of tracks found
in the flower beds, but in other places
the grass came up to the edge of the
house and would not hold prints. Ten
thousand dollars which various Civic
Clubs had collected to buy land to be
given to the government for enlarging
the air base was missing. It was believed
stolen, but a thorough check had not
yet been completed.

Sooner or later I had to go down to
headquarters and face Browder, and I
knew that by this time he probably was
sure I had been in McDonald’s office be¬
fore he got there. I wondered how much
hell he’d give me, and on the chance that
the Bishop might be at the paper and
would go to headquarters with me, I
went by the office. But he wasn’t there.
The city editor’s book didn’t have any¬
thing special for me on it. I went by the
jail and the courthouse and the fire-
station for the day’s routine stuff. And
finally I went on to headquarters.

As I was starting in the door Browder
and a couple of plainclothesmen came
out, walking fast. Browder saw me and
his eyes got a hot glare in them.

He said : “I’m in a hurry, or I’d stop
to talk to you. Be around when I gel
back.” It was distinctly an order.

I went into headquarters and back tc
what Browder liked to call The Labora¬
tory, though South City had spent nc
fortune equipping it. The Journal repor-

116

10,001 Motives for Murder

117

ter, Tommy Harris, was there with Bill
Piker. Piker was a young cop, no older
than I am, and Browder was training
him as his “scientific assistant.”

Piker’s eyebrows went up when he
saw me. “Browder went out just a min¬
ute ago. Boy doek he want to see you!”

“I saw him leaving. What’s his hur¬
ry?”

“A patrolman down by the railroad
phoned and said he thought he recog¬
nized Ben Steiner — on a freight train
headed out of town.”

Tommy Harris said: “He was at the
Black and Red last night when McDon¬
ald got killed, but nobody's seen him
since. He didn’t go home last night and
about noon there was a report from his
mother that he was missing. I think
Browder’s got him tied up with the
shooting and the ten grand somehow.
And listen, what’s this you’ve done that’s
got the lieutenant so hot under the col¬
lar ?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing. I’ll be
seeing y’all.” And I left.

With Ben Steiner missing and maybe
leaving town on a freight I didn’t want
to have to answer Browder’s questions
alone. I knew he’d take liberties with me
which he wouldn’t take with the Bishop
— even the governor is leary how he
beards the Bishop. He’d got me into
this, now let him get me out. I went
back to the office.

WAS heading down
’ the hall for the news-
I room when Mrs. Good
I saw me and called me
• into her office. Mrs.
Good is the society
editor. She is a gray¬
haired, rather handsome old lady with
a firm jaw and bright dark eyes and she
can outswear the British navy. The
Anglo-Saxon words that even Heming¬
way characters are careful with are her
favorites.

“Sit down, Eddie.” She leaned back
in her chair, took a puff from a quarter-
inch cigarette that she held between the

blades of a huge pair of scissors, and
said: “I’ve been sick all day because I
didn’t go to that brawl. But how the hell
could I know somebody was going to get
murdered? Who killed the - —

“I don’t know.”

“That Howell tart was in the room
when it happened, wasn’t she?”

“She was talking to Ralph.”

“Then she killed him,” Mrs. Good
said. “A damn wonder she hasn’t killed
somebody before this. She’s done every¬
thing else.”

“She can’t be that bad. She’s a sweet¬
looking girl.”

Mrs. Good got the last possible drag
out of her cigarette, flipped it into a spit¬
toon and spat after it. Hers is probably
the only society editor’s office in the
country that has a spittoon in it. On the
side next the wall was printed SOCIE¬
TY but you didn’t see that unless you
turned the spittoon around. She said:
“They all look sweet to you, Eddie. If
all the tarts in the Junior League were
as pious as the looks they get on their
faces, the men in South City would be
missing one hell of a lot of fun. Not
that you make much use of your own
face. Why don’t you get around more?”

I went back to the original subject.
“Whoever killed Ralph McDonald,” I
said, “probably did it for ten thousand
dollars — though they must have stolen
the money before they shot him. Maybe
they knew that if he found it was missing
he’d realize who took it. And you know
Miss Howell wouldn’t shoot anybody for
ten thousand bucks. She’s rich.”

“She hasn’t got a - nickel. Her

father, old Wayne Howell, had pots of it,
at one time or another, that he cheated
people out of. But he didn’t have it when
he died. Judge Jones just finished pro¬
bating the estate a few weeks back.
Wayne Howell owed half the folks in
the state. That’s why Ralph McDonald

decided not to marry her. That -

- - wouldn’t do anything that

didn’t add to his fortune.”

“Somebody told me they were going

118

Wyatt Blassingame

to be married, in just a week or two.”

“Somebody told you, but Ralph Mc¬
Donald didn’t. He was trying to crawl
out of that wedding. That’s why she
killed him.”

It was a good theory. More than one
man has been shot in South City because
of broken engagements, but in this case
I doubted it. Mrs. Good had been society
editor so long, and has had to write so
much sweetness-and-light that she reacts
by always believing the worst.

The phone rang and Mrs. Good said :
“Another old slut with some slop for
my social cesspool.” But when she
picked up the phone her voice changed
entirely. It dripped honey. “Hell-oo.”

I heard the Bishop’s cane pegging
down the hallway then and I jumped up
and grabbed him as he went by the door.
“We’re in a mess, Bishop! Lieutenant
Browder knows we were at McDonald’s
office last night and he probably knows
Ben Steiner was there, and now Stein¬
er’s missing ! Vanished ! They think he
was seen leaving town on a freight
train!”

“Well, well.” Bishop Atticus didn’t
seem more than mildly interested. He
waved his hand at Mrs. Good. “How
are you this evening, Mrs. Good?”

She slid one hand over the mouth¬
piece, said: “Lousy as usual. Come on
in and have a drink. I want to talk to
you, too.”

The Bishop pegged past me to Mrs.
Good’s watercooler, took a pint bottle
out of his pocket, and broke the seal on
it. With great deliberation he started
mixing his two fingers of water and two
of whiskey.

“Listen, Bishop,” I said. “I’m on a
spot ! If Browder doesn’t slap me in jail,
he’ll at least be so mad I’ll never get any
more news from him. What’ll I do?”

The Bishop tossed off his drink. “Just
tell him who’s guilty, and let him take
the credit. Give him a big play in the
paper, and everything will be square
again. ”

“Yeah. And how am I supposed to
tell him?”

“Who does Mrs. Good think killed
Ralph?”

From the middle of a conversation
about pink organdy and lace Mrs. Good
said: “That Howell slut.”

“Is she?” the Bishop said. “Damn
good-looking too. I think we ought to
go out and see her, Eddie.”

Mrs. Good hung up the receiver and
swung around and spat at the cuspidor.
“A coming-out party for the McPherson
brat,” she said. “That little pushover’s
already been out more times than an
alley cat. Where you going, Roscoe?”

The Bishop was pegging out the door.
“Eddie and I are going to see if what
you say about Nancy Howell is true.
Come on, Eddie.”

“A lot of good it’ll do you, at your
age !” Mrs. Good yelled.

I said, “For the first time in my life
I’m looking forward to being fired,” and
went wearily after the Bishop.

CHAPTER FOUR

Enter — The Dead

INCE her father’s
death Nancy Howell
had moved from the
huge colonial home in
which they had lived
to a small white bun¬
galow a half-block
away. She was alone when we got there,
except for a Negro maid who let us in,
then went back to the kitchen to go on
with preparations for dinner.

Miss Howell was still suffering from
strain and shock, and it showed in her
face, but she tried to smile at us. “I
suppose y’all have to do this,” she said,
"but really I don’t want to talk about it
any more. I want to — to forget.”

She was wearing a white linen dress.
She had an excellent figure and although
the dress looked modest enough you
could tell she was under it. Her eyes,
without tears in them, were more blue
than gray. Her face was pale and there
were shadows under her eyes.

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120

Wyatt Blassingame

We said the usual things and sat down
and talked a few minutes. And then, ab¬
ruptly, the Bishop said: “Is there any
chance, Miss Howell, that the face you
saw at the window wasn’t John Bollo’s
monkey?”

She stared at him and a little of last
night’s fear came back into her eyes.
“What else could it have been?”

“It could have been the murderer.”

I could see her throat move as she
swallowed. “I only had a glimpse of it,
and it was beyond the window. It was
small and hairy. That’s all I could tell.
It must have been the monkey.”

The Bishop said: “If you thought it
was somebody, would you be afraid to
say so?”

After a moment she said : “I see what
you mean, Mr. Atticus.” The fear was
gone from her eyes now. She looked
straight at him. “If I had seen the man
who killed Ralph and recognized him, I
wouldn’t be afraid to tell you, to tell the
police. I wouldn’t be afraid of what he
might do to me. My father taught me
how to use a gun, Mr. Atticus, and I
can take care of myself.”

“I’ll bet old Wayne did teach you,”
the Bishop chuckled. But his little puck¬
ered features sobered almost instantly.
“I didn’t mean that you were afraid. I
thought there might be some other rea¬
son.”

“You mean that — that he was some¬
body I am in love with?”

“Somebody that you have reason tc
protect.”

“I wasn’t in love with anybody but
Ralph.” Her gray-blue eyes turned tc
me then. “Maybe I wasn’t really in love
with him. I liked him. I don’t know. . . ,
But I wouldn’t protect anybody who
shot him.”

“Not even Ben Steiner?” the Bishop
asked.

She gave just the barest kind of start,
But her voice was steady when she said :
“Not Ben Steiner. I’ve had dates wit!
him. I like Ben. But I’ve never lovec
him and I’ve never owed him anything. ’

10,001 Motives for Murder

121

After a moment she added: “Why do
you name him?”

“He seems to have skipped out of
town. And the cops are looking for him.”

Her lips parted as though to speak,
then closed again. Her breathing had
quickened.

“What?” the Bishop asked.

“Nothing. Except that I don’t be¬
lieve Ben killed Ralph. I’d never be¬
lieve it.”

The phone rang then and she an¬
swered. It was evidently some girl friend
offering condolences. They talked for a
few minutes, and when Miss Howell re¬
placed the phone and turned toward us
again her face had gone completely
bloodless. Her eyes seemed to overflow
their sockets and there was a tortured
look in them.

“All I want,” she said huskily, “is to
forget everything. And I’ll never be able
to. They won’t let me.”

“Who won’t let you ?”

“The persons who are supposed to be
my friends. They keep calling. They
keep reminding me. They think I killed
him!”

The Bishop and I stared at her. I
seemed to be still hearing what she had
said, and it was incredible. Finally the
Bishop said: “You’re just upset. Why
would anybody think you killed Ralph
McDonald?”

“But they do think that ! If only there
was some way I could prove to them,
could prove to everybody, that I’m inno¬
cent ! ”

“If you spotted the real murderer
that’d be proof,” the Bishop said.

She looked at him for long time out
of those too wide, gray-blue eyes. She
closed her eyes slowly and pressed her
hand over them for a moment. “I don’t
know the real murderer,” she said.

And about then I had my brain storm.
I said: “There’s a way you can prove
you’re innocent. There’s a way you can
prove it if you haven’t fired a gun at any
time the last day or two. The paraffin
test !”

“What’s a paraffin test?”

“I did an article for the paper on it a
month or two back when I was writing
about some of Lieutenant Browder’s new
methods. It’s a way they can prove
whether or not you’ve fired a gun during
the last few days. If you have, there
will be nitrate sticking to your hand.
There’s no way to wash it off. And it
will show up in the test.”

She was showing excitement. “Does
the test take long?”

“Not very.”

“Then I want it made. Now! I want
everybody to know I didn’t kill Ralph.
Will you take me where they make
it?”

I was suddenly remembering Browder
and feeling unwilling to face him. But
the Bishop said: “Sure. We’ll take you
down to headquarters.”

S WE were driving
past the paper on the
way to police head¬
quarters the Bishop
said : “Just let me out
here, Eddie.” I
started to argue with
him, but I knew it wasn’t any use. He’d
rooked me again. I let him out and with
no small amount of trepidation I drove
Miss Howell on to headquarters.

For the first time in all my dealings
with the Bishop, however, luck was with
me. Browder hadn’t yet returned from
chasing after Ben Steiner, so I told Bill
Piker what was wanted and he set about
making the test on Miss Howell’s hands.

Muddy Marshall was there. He
seemed about two thirds tight and was
in his customary good humor. He said :
“So you’re accused of the murder too,
Nancy. I’ll get a client out of this yet,
if I have to defend myself.”

I asked if ti.ey were accusing him.

“No formal charges,” he said grin¬
ning. “But they found my shoeprint in
one of the flowerbeds, and I’m supposed
to hang around until Sherlock Browder
gets back and then explain everything.”

“What were you doing in the flower¬
beds ?”

122

Wyatt Blassingame

“Ah-ha !” he said dramatically. “Not
what you think. I was chasing after that
damn monkey of John Bollo’s. I
wanted to give it a drink of whiskey.”

“When was that?” I asked. “Was it
before or after the shot?”

It was the way he looked at me then,
for just a split instant, that gave me the
idea he might not be as drunk as he pre¬
tended. He said: “I don’t know exact¬
ly. I never heard the shot.”

Bill Piker had finished his test and
removed the smooth coating of paraf¬
fin from Nancy Howell’s hands and
examined it. “It’s perfectly clear,” he
said. “There’s not a sign of nitrate.”

“That means. . . ?” she asked.

“That means you haven’t shot a gun
in the thirty-six to forty-eight hours.”

She turned to me. It was the first time
I had ever seen her actually smile with¬
out shock or tears or terror in her eyes.
And I thought then that she was com¬
pletely beautiful. She had a clean,
washed look that was almost spiritual.
She took my hand in both of hers.
“Thank you, Eddie! Thank you. Take
me home now.”

AT HER front step I
told her good-night. I
had to go back to the
paper and work. She
said : “You’ve got time
for one drink with
me, Eddie. I feel so
— so free. And it seems like years since
I’ve felt that way. I want somebody to
talk to.”

Well, I should have been at the paper
for the last hour but, well ... I went in
with her.

We went into the living-room and
Nancy Howell took off her hat and
tossed it on the sofa. She ran her fin¬
gers through her blond hair and shook
it back from her ears. She called :
"Mazzie, make a couple of Manhattans,
please.”

There wasn’t any answer.

Nancy Howell said: “Now I wonder
where that girl is.”

She called Mazzie’s name again, loud¬
ly this time. And still there was no
answer.

“She must have gone to the store for
something. Well, we can make the
drinks ourselves.”

We went into the kitchen and mixed a
couple of Manhattans. Pots simmered
on the stove. Dishes were stacked on a
table. The cook had evidently gone out
while in the middle of preparing the din¬
ner.

We went back into the living-room
and sat down on the sofa. It was a warm
evening with the windows wide open. I
remember that twice I heard insects
bump against the screens. Nancy How¬
ell sipped at her drink, then leaned and
put one hand on my left hand. She said :
“You’ve been awfully nice, Eddie. You
don’t know how terrible it is to feel that
your friends suspect you of something
horrible, and have no way to prove to
them you’re innocent.”

“I’m glad if I helped.”

“You did, a lot. Now — ”

That was when we first heard the
sound. In that first instant I don’t be¬
lieve that either of us recognized it, knew
what the sound was. Yet after we heard
it we both sat as silent and still as sta¬
tues. I remember noticing that the liquor
in my glass was not even trembling.

We must have sat like that for five full
seconds. It seemed like five hours. And
then we heard it again.

This time I knew what it was.

It was a man moaning. Not in agony
but in something worse than that. If a
corpse could struggle to reach life again,
it might make a sound like that. Then
the moan ended and I heard the faint
scratching of fingernails on wood. It
seemed to come from somewhere in the
little foyer that we sat facing.

I said: “What was that?” I didn’t
look at Nancy Howell. I was staring at
the empty foyer. And Nancy Howell
didn’t answer. After a few seconds we
heard that muffled horrible moaning
again, and again the sound of fingers
clawing on wood.

10,001 Motives for Murder

I said huskily : “It’s in the hall closet.”

“Yes.”

That was all she said. But it brought
me around like the cracker on a whip.

It was a sensation that I felt not in
any one place, but all through my body :
in my fingertips and my brain and my
feet, in my stomach and my lungs and
my throat. It was a kind of electrical
shock that seemed to shrivel my body, to
make it shrink in upon itself. I couldn’t
move. I just stood there and stared
at Nancy Howell’s face.

I hardly recognized her. Her face was
contorted and hideous. It was an animal
face with the cheek bones sharp across
it and the eyes narrowed and the lips
peeled back from the teeth. She never
dropped her glass, never spilled the li¬
quor, and somehow that seemed the most
horrible part of the whole business, the
perfect way she balanced that glass as
she backed across the room. Her eyes
were riveted always on the closet door
in the foyer, but she moved steadily back¬
ward to a desk in the corner of the liv¬
ing-room and reached back and put down
the cocktail glass.

I noticed the way she was breathing,
in deep quick gasps between parted
lips — quick gasps that pressed her
breasts tight against her dress.

Still looking at the closet door she
reached behind her and opened a drawer
in the desk. She did something I couldn’t
see plainly — there must have been a false
bottom to the drawer — and drew out a
key and transferred it to her left hand.
She reached into the drawer again and
this time her hand came out with a small
pearl-handled revolver.

“Open that door,” she whispered.

I gulped.

She looked at me for the first time
and her gaze and the gun swung to¬
gether. I thought the bullet was al¬
ready plowing into my stomach and I felt
sick. “Open that door!” She was still
whispering — and for the first time I real¬
ized that she was insanely afraid.

I stumbled across to the closet and

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Wyatt Blassingam*

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124

the key made jittery noises as 1 groped
for the lock. I turned the key and backed
away.

There was absolutely so sound from
beyond that door now. There was no
sound in the whole house. Not even the
sound of breathing.

The doorknob began to turn. It moved
very slowly. With a kind of infinite
furious patience it turned a little at a
time. There was a sudden, loud click
as the latch turned free.

The door swung Open and the corpse
walked out into the room.

It was Ben Steiner. He wore the same
white suit he had worn the night be¬
fore, but the front of it now was the dark
brown-black of dried blood. The bullet
hole was directly over the heart. His
hands hung rigid at his sides, and he
looked at me with open, blank, dead eyes.
I have seen men electrocuted at the state
prison. I’ve seen them when the mask
was taken off. That look on the face of
the dead can’t be copied and you don’t
have to look twice to recognize it. Ben
Steiner was dead — and he was walking.

Nancy Howell must have tried to
scream and the terror in her throat
stopped her. She made a kind of chok¬
ing gasp. Her gun was pointed straight
at Steiner and her finger was white
around the trigger, frozen there.

I don’t think I ever really saw the
Bishop back of Ben Steiner although he
spread out a couple of inches on each
side. But I heard him yell: “Ai God,
Eddie ! Grab her gun ! Don’t stand there
all night! Grab her gun!”

I was still too numb to move. I heard
him and I knew what he said, but for at
least two seconds I just stood and gaped.
And in those two seconds Nancy Howell
swung her gun to cover my stomach.

The front door crashed open with a
noise as loud as a cannon. Nancy How¬
ell jumped, and fired — and the bullet
made a hole in my coat. Then she was
swinging away from me toward the door
and she fired once as she swung, hit¬
ting nothing but the wall.

10,001 Motives for Murder

125

Mrs. Good was standing in the open
doorway and yelling at me: “Grab her,
stupid!”

And finally I moved.

I grabbed her before she could shoot
again.

She stopped struggling instantly. She
dropped the gun and turned, and I re¬
leased her and she went over and sat
down on the sofa. She sat there and
looked at us and didn’t say a word. She
pushed the blond hair back from her
face and just sat there and stared at
us.

Mrs. Good was leaning against the
doorsill, mopping her face with a hand¬
kerchief that was already soaking wet
with perspiration. She was panting out
names, one after another, without even
commas between them, and I gathered
that she was referring to me and the
Bishop, tracing our ancestry back
through generations of various kinds of
livestock. Finally she paused for a
breath.

The Bishop beamed at her. “You’re
in rare form indeed tonight, Mrs.
Good!”

She said: “You — you — ” She shook
her head and took a long breath. “It’s a
good thing I decided to get some live
news in my social septic-tank for once
and drove out here.”

The Bishop chuckled. “You came be¬
cause you wanted to see if I was really
making any profit out of your informa¬
tion about Miss Howell’s morals. You
were jealous.”

“Of who?” Mrs. Good snapped. “Not
of you, you bald-headed old - .”

CHAPTER FIVE
The Final Motive

IEUTEN ANT
BROWDER, t h e
Bishop, Mrs. Good,
and I were in Nancy
Howell’s kitchen.
Miss Howell had de-
parted with a couple
of plainclothesmen. At the sink the Bis¬

hop poured two fingers of whiskey into
a glass, added an equal amount of water,
and with one swallow consumed every¬
thing but the glass.

I said: “Give me a drink. Bishop. I
still feel a little shaky.”

“You’re slowing down, Eddie. The
only reason I take you around with me
is to do the crude work. And now
you’re slowing down. You must be get¬
ting old.”

Browder cleared his throat and looked
important and said: “I think I have all
the details, but I’d like to know exactly
how you figure this thing, Mr.. Atti-
cus.”

“I can tell you how he figured it,”
Mrs. Good said. “He figured it because
I told him.”

“The lieutenant is interested in the
slower, more sordid method of reason,
rather than feminine intuition,” the
Bishop said. And to Browder, “I figure
she was probably at Ralph McDonald’s
office early last night, with Ralph, be¬
fore the brawl at the Red and Black.
I figure they quarreled and he said defi¬
nitely he wasn’t going to marry her.”

“That’s what I explained to you,”
Mrs. Good said.

I asked the Bishop if he thought that
was the reason Nancy Howell had killed
McDonald.

“That's one of them. Outraged
womanhood. A lot of women have shot
men who tried to jilt them.”

“She had ten thousand other reasons,”
Mrs. Good said, “that she got out of
Ralph McDonald’s safe. She damn well
knew about that money before she shot
him.”

“She had already stolen it when she
shot him,” the Bishop said. “She pro¬
bably knew the combination to his safe,
since she’s often visited him at his office.
And she needed the money. She was
flat broke — which didn’t matter if she
was going to marry Ralph. But she’d
always lived as a lady and she meant
to keep on living as a lady. One of
South City’s fairest examples of young
womanhood” — Mrs. Good made a snort-

126

Wyatt Blassingame

ing noise — “wasn’t going to be reduced
to poverty and doing her own house
work — not if simply shooting a guy
would keep her from it. The ten thou¬
sand would keep her two years, if she
was careful. And by that time she’d
have picked up some other man with
plenty of money and have him headed
down the aisle toward matrimony. But
she would need a year to work in, if
she was going to have any choice. And
she had to live comfortably.”

“If she had simply stolen the money,”
Browder said, “Mr. McDonald would
have known who took it. So she had to
get him out of the way.”

“Figure it that way if you want to,”
the Bishop said. “I think she shot him
because he turned her down.”

“But she didn’t seem to be much in
love with him,” I objected.

“Who the hell said she was? She was
in love with herself, like most women —
God bless ’em ! Ralph was going to soil
her reputation, make her a publicly dis¬
carded woman. So she let him have it.”

"DROWDER hemmed a couple of
•*-* times and brought himself to a diffi¬
cult admission. “I was almost certain
of my killer, Mr. Atticus, but I have to
thank you for discovering the gun, and
the long glove she wore to prevent the
paraffin test showing positive on her
hand. I hadn’t been able to find any
prints on the edge of the roof where
the killer was supposed to have hung
and dropped into the yard below. The
only deep print in the earth such as a
man would have made by jumping or
falling was the one Eddie made.”

“Ai God! You should have heard
him yowl! And you can thank Eddie
for her using that glove. She read one
of his articles in the paper about your
methods. That’s where she got her idea.”

“It’s all clear enough now,” I said.
“But I wonder why somebody didn’t
think of it at the time, why somebody
didn’t search her. She must have had
that gun and glove on her person all the
time.”

Browder looked shocked. The Bishop
said: “You’re nuts. Of course she had
’em on her, and you know where she
was carrying ’em. Or you should know.”

Mrs. Good said: “At my age, Eddie,
do I have to show you ?”

“All the searching of that kind done
in South City,” the Bishop said, “is
purely unofficial. There are no police
women in this town. And imagine a
cop, imagine our good Lieutenant Brow¬
der here, searching the secret regions
of one of the fairest flowers of young
womanhood in South City.”

Browder got swiftly to another sub¬
ject. “All my checking indicates that
Mr. Ben Steiner was in or near the hall¬
way down which the murderer was sup¬
posed to have escaped. He must have
suspected from the first that Miss
Howell was guilty. I believe that he
went from the Red and Black Club to
McDonald’s office, and there found Miss
Howell’s handkerchief, which showed
she’d been there since the money was
brought to that office in the afternoon.
Then, I believe, he brought the hand¬
kerchief here to Miss Howell.”

“Yep,” the Bishop said. “I’ll bet she
thought his was the face she saw outside
the window. She could never be certain
it was the monkey — and whoever it was
knew she had killed Ralph. When he
brought the handkerchief to her she was
certain. I’ve got an idea Steiner was in
love with the gal. I don’t believe he
would have turned her over to the cops.
But anyway, she made certain. She
potted ffie guy. That’s one way to be
sure they stay quiet.”

“It must have been almost morning
by the time he got here,” I said.

“It was morning, or by the time they
talked and she potted him it was morn¬
ing. That’s why she had to keep the
corpse in the house until tonight. She
couldn’t go riding through town in day¬
light with a corpse. While you had her
down at headquarters I came back to
look for the gun — I sent the maid home
— but all I found was poor Ben. So I
thought if she had shot Ben once I

10,001 Motives for Murder

127

might get her to produce the gun and
shoot him again.”

“The key to that closet was in the
drawer with the gun,” I said. “How’d
you get in there?”

"Did you ever see a house where half
the closets wouldn’t open with the same
key? Soon as I found that one was
locked I got the key out of another and
looked inside. And there he was.”

FTER another drink
~^we went outside and
^Browder looked up at
* the house. It was
dark here and I could¬
n’t see the lieutenant’s
^.face clearly. He said:
“The way things have turned out I’m
not going to take any official action, but
it is strictly illegal to break into the of¬
fice of a man who has just been mur¬
dered.”

The Bishop said: “Nuts, Lieutenant.
And good-night. Eddie’ll give you a big
spread in the paper tomorrow.”

Mrs. Good’s car was parked just be¬
hind the Bishop’s. We walked back with
her and the Bishop handed her in. I
asked the two of them what they thought
would be done with Nancy Howell.

“Why she’ll give the money back,”
the Bishop said, “and swear she was
just keeping it for Ralph. And she’ll
say she shot him because she had to
defend her honor, and cook up the same
kind of yarn about Ben. I wouldn’t bet
the case will ever come to trial. Folks
will discuss it only with their friends and
nobody will remember that the city com¬
missioner gave a party in a gambling
house.”

“One other thing, Bishop. “When
did you first know she was guilty?”

“Ai God ! I knew all the time. But
you think I was going to tell anybody
last night and let the Journal get the
whole story? What kind of a news¬
paper man do you think I am?”

“A stinker,” Mrs. Good said, starting
the motor. “And you are also one of
the world’s goddamndest liars.”

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128

JIM GREGG

A PRISON POEM

CHARLES E. JESTINGS

In the next cell at night
I’ve heard the continual gnashing of
Gregg’s teeth.

Heard hatred from his belly gush out
In vile curses against both God and man.

/ saw him in the day —

I saw his eye,

Haunted by the wild stare
Of the jungle jaguar.

Heartless,

Hopeless,

Hard—

Gregg finally stretched rope
For the murder of a guard.

ITCHING FEET

ATHLETE’S FOOT

Send Coupon
Don't Pay Unless Relieved

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BEWARE OF IT SPREADING

Often the disease travels all over the bottom
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Get relief from this disease as quickly as pos¬
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HERE’S HOW TO RELIEVE IT

The germ that causes the disease is known
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A test made shows it takes 15 minutes of boil¬
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STATE.

" Prettiest leaf I ever did see !

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" Thanks to Government help, ’ ’ adds Mr. Evans, ' 1 tobacco farm -
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HAVE YOU TRIED A LUCKY LATELY ?

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